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.