Ivan Hicks: Fifty Years of Fabulous Fiddle Music

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University and editor of the Newsletter
of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and
Documentation Centres.

New Brunswick fiddler Ivan Hicks is mentioned only once in The
Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (1992), but on the basis of this
biography he deserves more notice. The 56-year-old Hicks is a leading
figure in “down East” old-time music, and has performed across North
America with his country and bluegrass band, Maritime Express. He also
has made a dozen recordings and is a member of both the New Brunswick
Country Hall of Fame and the North American Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame.

The product of a musical family, Hicks seems to have been born with a
fiddle in his hand. Yet until recently, he was also a full-time
schoolteacher and administrator, having earned a M.Ed. degree from the
University of New Brunswick in the 1970s.

Those seeking a warts-and-all portrait will not find it in Ivan Hicks.
Author Allison Mitcham is a self-described fan and friend, and this is
very much an authorized account, written at the suggestion of Hicks’s
wife, Vivian, who has been instrumental in building his career. One also
wishes that a better balance had been struck between discussing the man
and the music. As with so many biographies of this kind, this one tips
the scales heavily in favor of the performer’s personality.