Vermont Life
Spring 2007
Mark Sustic, Fletcher

Two threads run through Mark Sustic’s considerable accomplishments: One is early education with a focus on children with disabilities; the other is music. Sustic plays several stringed instruments, and he’s always eager to share what he loveswith others.

Sustic came to Vermont from Michigan as an early education graduate student at UVM and found he missed the vibrant folk scene he’d enjoyed in Ann Arbor.

In 1981 he started a Burlington coffeehouse called the Welcome Table and began inviting folk artists to play.

Later he founded the Champlain Valley Festival – a cherished summer folk event that’s probably best known for introducing Quèbecois music and dance to an appreciative Vermont public.

Sustic ran the Festival for 10 years, while also running early education programs in Franklin County and being honored for his work in education. At the same time, he also built a part-time career as a performer and dance caller.

But in 1999 his son Tom, 14, was diagnosed with leukemia. In the subsequent two years that Tom lived, musicians rallied to play benefits for a bone marrow transplant that, sadly, never took place.

“When Tom died, we were left with a chunk of money,” Sustic says. He and his wife, Deborah Travis, decided to continue the concerts and sep up a fund to support families facing similar medical ordeals.

The musicians at his monthly Events for Tom series are now paid, but part of the proceeds goes to the fund. Sustic also regularly appears with his instruments and friends on the pediatric floor at Fletcher Allen Hospital where his family endured some of its worst moments – not an easy place to return to, but a rewarding one, he says.

In 2003, after years of being asked to teach violin, Sustic started the Fiddleheads, a group of fiddlers aged 8 to 19. Under his tutelage they learn traditional music and perform at festivals, weddings and fairs. He doesn’t get upset if anyone misses a rehearsal. “Music doesn’t have to be the only thing in your life, or even the main thing, to make you happy,” he says.

The 24th Annual Champlain Valley Folk Festival August 3-5, 2007

FIDDLEHEADS
Started by Mark Sustic in the early winter of 2003, Fiddleheads is a group of young people (as young as 5, as old as 19) who get together to learn and perform traditional fiddle tunes, mostly associated in some way with traditions found in northern Vermont.

There are about 45 members of the group, but never more than a dozen or so in one place at one time. Several members of the group were individual winners at this year’s Young Tradition concert in Burlington, and will be featured at the Festival. Participants learn to value the contributions of the various cultural traditions associated with northern Vermont, to use traditional music to celebrate the contributions of these groups, and whenever possible, to learn directly from representatives of those traditions of the guitar listening to bluegrass flatpicking, and learned to pick and back tunes at a local jam. He has a love of all types of traditional music from Scandinavian to Mongolian.

Vermont History Expo 2007

Fiddleheads
Under the direction of Mark Sustic, a lively group of pre-teen and teen fiddlers play traditional fiddle music, highlighting Yankee, French and Irish heritage. A History Expo encore performance!