Personnel:
Amy Swenson, fiddle (b. 1949, Berkeley, California: music teacher)
Cec Chapman, fiddle (b. 1934, Murray Harbour: fisherman and tugboat operator).
Mel Giddings, guitar (b. 1937, White Sands: retired electronic technologist).
Wayne MacLean, guitar (b. 1948, Montague: maintenance worker at Hospital).)
Kenny Chapman, mandolin: (b. 1960, Murray Harbor: fisherman)
Tracy MacLean Higginbotham, bass: (b. 1974: schoolbus driver)
The Murray Harbour Six is one of many amateur fiddle-music bands that have cropped up around PEI since the early 1990s (another is Mary Smith & Friends). At its heart in 2006 were fiddlers Amy Swenson, a relative newcomer to the Island who set up an extensive fiddle-instruction practice in central and southern Kings County, and Cec Chapman, who learned during the traditional period but only rarely played for dances. In terms of the other personnel, Kenny Chapman is Cec's son, Wayne MacLean is a fairly close relative of the fiddlers Danny MacLean and Clarence MacLean, and Tracy MacLean Higgenbotham is Wayne's daughter.
The group plays a mixture of Cape Breton tunes, popular Island tunes, and tunes that are popular among fiddle-music enthusiasts world-wide, such as The Bonny Lea Rig and Old Grey Bonnet. Swenson has brought to the group her interest in crafting tight arrangements and in playing close harmonies to fiddle tunes, a practice that until very recently was only very rarely encountered in the Island fiddling scene (two other local practitioners were clarinetist Rae Simmons of Don Messer's band the Islanders, and fiddler Peter Doiron).
Though Cecil Chapman passed away in 2011, the band continues to perform at the Murray Harbour Ceilidh and other benefit concerts with Amy Swenson, Mel Giddings, Kenny Chapman (and sometimes Wayne MacLean) as the Murray Harbour Three (or Four). Sometimes friends or Swenson's fiddle students join them to increase the number.
