During the summer of 1980, while still an undergraduate at Dickinson College, Ginger Hildebrand (MM ’88, Guitar) and her future husband, David Hildebrand, spent their evenings playing music in local bars around Annapolis, Maryland. They performed their favorite pop songs by James Taylor and the Beatles, with a few fiddle tunes sprinkled in. One night, they received an unfamiliar request. “This is a colonial town,” shouted someone in the audience of the Dockside Bar. “Do you know any colonial music?” The couple did not. But when they got the same question from different patrons during shows at other pubs, they decided they ought to. So, they ordered several music books from Colonial Williamsburg and learned three tunes from the era, including“The Fly,” a ditty about a manwho shares a round of drinks witha housefly.
“Then we got a paying gig playing colonial music,” says Ginger Hildebrand. And the couple’s musical trajectory began to change.
“It became clear that there was interest in having colonial music performances at the historic sites like the William Paca House, the Hammond-Harwood House, Reynolds Tavern, as well as at outdoor festivals,” adds David Hildebrand, who holds a doctorate in musicology from the Catholic University of America and is a former Peabody lecturer in music history. “We responded to the demand and the fact that the music was also kind of interesting.”
In the years since then, researching, recording, and performing colonial music—music written or performed between roughly 1607 and 1783—has become a focal point of the Hildebrands’ musical careers. Dressed in period costume, they have presented concerts and educational programs (Ginger on violin, guitar, and hammered dulcimer; David on harpsichord) throughout the country at historical sites like Mount Vernon, the Smithsonian, and Colonial Williamsburg. They’ve produced seven CD recordings, appeared on both National Public Radio and BBC radio, and served as consultants for several PBS broadcasts, including Liberty! The American Revolution and Anthem: The Story of the Star-Spangled Banner.
In 1999, along with dance historians Kate van Winkle and Robert Keller, they co-founded the Colonial Music Institute (colonialmusic.org), which conducts and promotes research and educational outreach in the fields of early American music and dance and is now directed by the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Throughout 2026, the Hildebrands will perform their current concert project, Music of the American Revolution: The 250th Anniversary, at historic sites throughout the original 13 colonies.
Researching the music of the colonial era requires a deep dive into primary sources like newspapers, court records, and repositories of manuscript and printed music, explains David Hildebrand, who is the self-proclaimed “hopeless academic” of the pair (he points to Ginger as “the better musician”). Geography also provides context and nuance. Different colonies became home to immigrants from many countries, as well as enslaved and free Black people, all of whom brought their own tunes, religious backgrounds, and cultural diversity to the mix—elements that the Hildebrands incorporate into their performances.
The couple sees themselves as teaching history through music. By encouraging audience members to ask questions and come up after a show to chat or touch the instruments, they demonstrate that “history is a real and human thing,” explains Ginger Hildebrand. “We program songs that seem to bring that out.”
On July 4, 2026, the couple will perform Music of the American Revolution at the Maryland State House in Annapolis in the renovated Old Senate chamber, the very space in which General George Washington surrendered his commission to the Continental Army in 1783.
For Ginger Hildebrand, it promises to be an emotional moment. “During this big anniversary year, patriotism cannot be owned by the right or the left, you know?” she says. “If there was a single message that I needed to give, it’s that we all own the flag, we all own its history, and the ongoing fight that we have for freedom and the debt that we owe to the patriots and the warriors before us is all of ours.”