NANCY RUBIN STUART PHOTOS
Denya LeVine at Cape Abilities, one of the places she teaches music classes.
By NANCY RUBIN STUART
You can count on Denya LeVine to hit the right note wherever she appears—whether it’s at music festivals, concerts, parties, benefits or schools. That’s because as a full-time performing musician, Denya’s fiddle, ukulele and singing fascinates her listeners. “ I like making people smile,” she explains. “It’s a thrill making music and watching people leave a performance happier than when they came. That makes me happy too.”
Denya illustrated that joy during a ukulele lesson she was giving to several adults at the Cape Abilities Center in Hyannis. “Here’s how you hold it. Good! Now strum, strum,” she tells the students who place their hands on their instruments, start playing and look pleased.
Working at Cape Abilities in Hyannis and Eastham, at day care centers, senior centers, nursing homes and playing in bands are among the most important ways Denya has illustrated the joy of music to Cape Codders for the last 35 years.
Denya’s mane of salt and pepper hair and warm personality epitomize the free-spirited music she delivers to students—often as a volunteer—as well as to paying audiences. Music, she believes, can have a powerful and healthy effect upon others. “When people listen to something that pleases them, it raises their endorphins and offers them the opportunity to reflect in the midst of their lives,” she said.
One of the busiest of those lives is Denya’s own. As a child growing up in Sharon, she initially studied violin with Sheldon Rotenberg of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She also once heard Pete Seeger at a fundraiser in a Boston home.
A student strums at a class with instructor Denya LeVine.
At age 15, while attending boarding school at Cushing Academy in Asburnham, she put away her violin and later became a theater major at Ithaca College. By then the Vietnam years were in full swing and like thousands of other young people, Denya embraced the counterculture and moved to New York City. There, she worked her way up from a menial job to become the box office treasurer at Filmore East, one of the coolest Lower East Side concert halls specializing in rock, jazz and folk music.
Imbued with the era’s zeitgeist for peace, Denya and a boyfriend traveled for several years in India, Pakistan and Iran. While in Afghanistan, she studied flute with a master from Kabul.
The couple returned to the United States in 1975 and after going their separate ways, Denya moved to Cambridge and became involved in the music scene. In 1977, after a hiatus of 15 years, she took up the fiddle again. Having formed the City Ladies Country Quartet which specialized in folk, Celtic and old-timey music, she was invited to play at the Inn at Duck Creek in Wellfleet. The dangerous neighborhood where she lived in Cambridge and a love affair in Wellfleet convinced her to settle in that town and she lived there for the next 19 years.
One of Denya LeVine’s ukelele students.
When she first came to the Cape, Denya played mostly Celtic and folk music, but over the years her repertoire expanded to include Jewish and world music. During the past three and a half decades, Denya has appeared with at least ten bands. Currently she plays in a duo with Julie Charland and in a six women band called The Ukeladies.
Attending one of Denya’s concerts is rarely an idle venture, for she believes music should involve the listener as well as the players. To do so, Denya encourages her audiences to sing along, clap their hands, stamp their feet or whatever else works well. “Music isn’t just about sound, it’s about people,” she said.
By nature, a performing musician’s life is peripatetic and means constantly hustling for new gigs, but Denya wouldn’t trade that life for anything else. “In some ways, it’s the best way to live. I’ve met many different people. It’s been a privilege to share music with them. What could be better than that?”
Nancy Rubin Stuart, executive director of the Cape Cod Writers Center, is an award-winning author and journalist.
