All Join Hands is the story of what happened when a ten-thousand-year-old musical tradition was

put into the hands of a seventeen-year-old Boston boy in 1947. While in high school, Dudley

Laufman apprenticed with fiddlers and callers throughout New England. Eventually, he squired

the old country dance traditions through to their revival in the 1960s at the Newport Folk

Festival, the Club 47, and Robert J. Lurtsema’s Morning Pro Musica broadcasts. Decades of

performances in famous venues and small villages led to his receiving the National Heritage

Fellowship Award in 2009.

As Tom Rush, iconic singer/songwriter says, “Tom Curren has done a brilliant job here,

weaving an engaging narrative of how Dudley Laufman coordinated and energized the amazing

resurgence of an ancient art form—the contradance/square dance—in New England and

beyond.” All Join Hands calls for a new quickening of spirit, nurtured and energized by the

traditional arts of New England.