Geoff Muldaur

A New Yorker who transplanted to Boston to attend Boston University, Muldaur was always wrapped up in music, releasing his first folk-blues album on Prestige in 1963, shortly before becoming a founding guitarist of the Cambridge-based good-timey Jim Kweskin Jug Band. It was there that he learned about arranging music and met violinist Maria D’Amato, who he married and later worked together with on two albums, one of which featured a recording of Brazil that would end up being the title song in the Terry Gilliam film of the same name. When Geoff and Maria parted ways, he joined Paul Butterfield’s Better Days, then restarted the solo career he began all of those years before. Muldaur left performing behind for a while, concentrating on writing music for documentary films and working as a computer programmer in the auto industry. But he returned to recording and live performance in his mid-50s. Recent projects include 2009’s Texas Sheiks, and Private Astronomy an exploration of music by Bix Beiderbecke. Regarding his arrangements of other people’s songs, Muldaur, who plays a little clarinet and some piano, but focuses on guitar says, “I Muldaurize, or mess things up, whichever way you want to look at it.”
(by Ed Symkus)