Alba’s Edge. From left, Doug Berns, bassist; Neil Pearlman, pianist; Lilly Pearlman, fiddler; Jacob Cole, percussionist. At Bates, Katie McNally will fill in for Lilly Pearlman.

NOTE TO READERS: Because of heavy snow predicted for Feb. 8, the Bates College Folk Music Festival has been postponed until spring. Watch bates.edu/news for an announcement of the new date.

Contradancing, workshops and performances by musicians from as far away as Scotland are on tap for the third annual Bates College Folk Music Festival, a two-day event beginning at 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8, in the Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave., and Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

The event is open to the public. Admission fees vary according to ability to pay — from $5 to $20 for one day, and $10 to $30 for both days. No one will be turned away for inability to pay. Tickets are available at the door. For more information, please visit batesfolkfest.weebly.com/.

The event is sponsored by the Freewill Folk Society, a student organization at Bates. For more information, please contact mpickof2@bates.edu.

The event opens Friday with music by the Bates ensemble Chase the Fiddlers, led by Greg Boardman of the applied music faculty, and by the Scottish trio Cantrip.

Friday’s performers also include Bates College students; the Press Gang, an Irish-music trio from Portland; and the Scottish-Latin fusion band Alba’s Edge. Kim Roberts of Farmington calls a 6:30 p.m. contradance with the Maine duo Velocipede and a 9 p.m. contradance with the Scottish band Alba’s Edge.

The Scottish trio Cantrip — from left, Eric McDonald, Jon Bews and Dan Houghton.

On Saturday, a yoga and stretching session starts the day’s activities at 9 a.m., followed by a 9:30 a.m. contradance with music by Greg and Jessie Boardman. Velocipede offers a concert at 3:30 p.m. The Portland band Tumbling Bones performs at the Ronj, Bates’ student-run coffeehouse at 32 Frye St., at 9 p.m.

About the performers

Chase the Fiddlers is a folk band composed of Bates students and faculty including Greg Boardman, of Auburn, a longtime presence in the Maine folk music scene.

Cantrip is composed of fiddler Jon Bews, bagpiper Dan Houghton and multi-instrumentalist Eric McDonald. Performing on both sides of the Atlantic for more than a decade, the band weaves together music both traditional and contemporary to take audiences on a unique cultural journey.

Velocipede, featuring fiddle tunes from around the world, consists of Julia Plumb, a member of the Bates class of 2005 who plays fiddle, viola and foot percussion; and Baron Collins-Hill, playing mandolin and tenor guitar.

Alba’s Edge draws on jazz, funk and the music of Cuba and Brazil, infusing traditional Scottish melodies with new ideas. Based in New York City and Boston, Alba’s Edge is led by pianist Neil Pearlman.

The Press Gang, composed of squeezebox player Christian “Junior” Stevens, fiddler Alden Robinson and guitarist Owen Marshall, performs all over the Northeast and into Atlantic Canada.

Greg and Jessie Boardman play fiddle and cello.

A singer and fiddler familiar to Bates and mid-Maine audiences, Schneckenburger is presented by the college’s Freewill Folk Society. Tickets cost $8 general admission and $5 for seniors, students and ages 12 and under. For reservations or artist information, call 207-268-4013; for directions or other venue information, call 207-786-6135.

Called an “exhilarating young traditional performer” by the folk-music magazine Dirty Linen, Schneckenburger has performed in Russia, Western Europe, Canada and across the United States. She has opened for artists such as master Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser and renowned singer Judy Collins. Her recordings include two solo titles, the widely reviewed Different Game (Footprint, 2001) and The Mad Hatter (Outer Green, 1997), as well as recent CDs with the bands Halali, Phantom Power and Spin.

A product of rural Litchfield, Maine, Schneckenburger picked up the fiddle at age 6 and was quickly recognized as a prodigy. Her teachers included Greg Boardman, a member of the Bates music faculty and a pillar of Maine’s folk music community who brought his young protégé into the state’s thriving contradance scene.

She went on to become a champion fiddler, taking top awards at the Common Ground Country Fair, Maine Festival and East Benton contests, and she later studied with such top bowmen as Fraser, Jay Ungar and jazz artist Matt Glazer.

“It’s been exciting to observe her progress as a performer over the years,” says Boardman, “as her facility, experience and ardor continue to expand.”

Now a Boston resident and a 2001 graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, Schneckenburger teaches and performs solo, with the acoustic fiddle band Halali and with the contradance groups Phantom Power and Spin.

“The bulk of the music I play could be described as a New England fiddle style,” says Schneckenburger. “But I’ve been influenced by plenty of other traditional music along the way — French Canadian, Scottish, Irish, Cape Breton, old-time and klezmer. I’ve used those influences to create a style that is all my own.”

Schneckenburger, who typically divides her sets about evenly between fiddle tunes and vocal music, will be accompanied at Bates by guitarist Ted Davis and bassist Corey DiMario. Boardman, of Auburn, is expected to join his former student on the Olin stage, and members of Wake the Neighbors — a Bates-based contradance band that Schneckenburger co-founded — may also perform.

“I’m very excited to come back to Bates. I had my first recital with Greg there,” says Schneckenburger, also a veteran of Bates’ orchestra and Noonday Concert Series.

“It sounds silly, but the hall feels like an old friend,” she says. “Add to that the fact that many of my old friends will be in the audience, and I can barely wait for this concert to happen.”

The event is open to the public. A donation at the door is requested. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

An Auburn resident, Boardman has performed in folk venues all over Maine during his 30-year career. His new recording, Divine Waltz, is a collection of tunes he has written over the past several years, performed more or less in a traditional Down East style — “acoustically delivered with a chamber-rock edge,” says Boardman.

Joining him at Bates will be several musicians featured on the disc, including Chris Prickitt, banjo; Beth Borgerhoff, accordion and piano; Peter Sturtevant, guitar; Jeff Taylor, bass; and Mike Hansen, percussion. Boardman’s sons Isaac, Ethan and Aidan will also perform, as will fiddler Ellen Gawler. From Bates, where Boardman is a member of the applied music faculty, participating musicians include seniors Jessie Gagne-Hall, fiddle; Mike Roberts, bass and dobro; and the folk choir Northfield.

Boardman has performed with the Northern Valley Boys, Old Grey Goose, the Ben Guillemette Ensemble and Timbrel. He practices a fiddle style inspired by such musicians as Don Messer, Simon St. Pierre, Otto Soper and Fairport Convention’s Dave Swarbrick, the English folk-rocker who first moved Boardman to swap his electric guitar for a fiddle.

Boardman’s solo recordings include Century Reel, In Came a Fiddler and Chantons, a Franco-American song collaboration with Michael Parent.

As a promoter of traditional fiddle music Boardman founded or co-founded a number of popular fiddling events, including (with the late Shirley Littlefield), Maine’s longest-running fiddle contest, the East Benton Fiddlers’ Convention.

He has also long been involved in the state’s burgeoning country-dance scene. Boardman teaches strings for the Lewiston School Department as well as for Bates.

The program includes Mozart’s “Flute Concerto in G Major” with Jeffery Pelletier, a member of the college’s physical plant staff, as soloist. Bates senior Philip Hsu of New York City will perform a violin solo in the first movement of the “Violin Concerto” by Finnish composer Jan Sibelius.

Bates senior Marian Drake of Granville, Ohio, will sing a cantata by J.S. Bach, with accompaniment of harpsichord, strings and a solo trumpet performance by John Furman, a member of the applied music faculty at Bates. The program will conclude with “Bon Temps Chez Nous,” a piece featuring fiddle tunes from the Franco-American tradition, commissioned by the Fighting Bobcat Orchestra from Greg Boardman, a fiddler and member of the applied music faculty at Bates.

The performance, to be conducted by Greg Boardman, is open to the public. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased by calling 207-783-4422 during daytime hours. Matthews’ Double Concerto for solo violin, solo viola and small orchestra, a three-movement work, reflects the heritage of New England and Franco- American fiddling. The piece includes themes based on such well-known fiddle tunes as “Marie’s Wedding” and “Isabeau s’y promene.” Soloists will be violinist Steve Kecskemethy and violist Julia Adams, members of the Portland String Quartet and string instructors at Bates.

AVCO will also perform “The Light Cavalry Overture” by Von Suppe and “Slavonic Dances” by Dvor‡k.

The Lewiston/Auburn Youth Orchestra (LAYO), under the direction of Charles Kadyk, will perform selections from classical composers.