Francis Fortier gives a mini-concert on his Stradivarius.—STAFF PHOTO BY ELLEN HATHAWAY

Even as a teenager, Fortier knew he would be washed up as an athlete by age 40 — the greats of that era, such as Johnny Bench and Willie Stargell, have been a long time away from the ballfield. Fortier, on the other hand, is still going strong with a full touring schedule, teaching appointments and his 40-year-old baby, the Bar Harbor Music Festival, is growing in stature and popularity each year.

Each summer, Fortier loads his “fiddle,” as he calls it, and his files into the car, a 1987 Cadillac given to him by his mother, and drives with his wife, Debby, to Bar Harbor.

“This car is in mint condition,” Fortier says. “I keep it like my fiddle.” Which means, he babies it. “It holds the road like a little tank,” Fortier enthuses. “It’s a beautiful mechanism.”

Once here, the Fortiers occupy a tiny upstairs office space on Cottage Street where they promote, manage and organize the festival. “This is Desert Storm,” Fortier says as we begin our interview. He offers a chair that looks sturdier than some of the rest, which are cracked, chipped and generally in disrepair. He cautions that a recent visitor took a tumble when a chair broke under him.

Francis Fortier first came to Bar Harbor as a young musician back in the 1960s. He was a student at Juilliard whose instructors admonished him to spend the summer at Kneisel Hall in Blue Hill.

“Kneisel Hall was tough,” he said, especially Marianne Kneisel. “She was like a sergeant patrolling the barracks. She was going to make sure her little boys and girls were in bed because we had to get up at dawn and practice.”

Fortier longed to be somewhere more fun. He said, “My gut sense as a city kid, I knew the action was in Bar Harbor.”

However tough it was, Kneisel Hall shaped the future of the young musician, as it did for many before and after him. While there, he met Dr. Richard Gott, who was on the board. Gott had an ecole academie in Bar Harbor. Fortier offered to teach his students about music, to lecture them about “Lenny Bernstein.” In exchange, Gott agreed to underwrite Fortier and a group of musicians, providing them food and lodging and use of the Bar Harbor Club for eight weeks where they could perform.

While he was receiving a first-rate musical education in Blue Hill, he knew, “You play in Bar Harbor, you play on a national stage.”

Back in New York, he attended a free seminar in 1969, courtesy David Rockefeller, at Lincoln Center for novice arts directors. This would give him the skills he needed to shape the fledgling BHMF.

Two of the world’s greatest violinists, Jascha Heifitz and Yehudi Menuhin, would shape him as a musician.

Fortier met Heifitz when he was just a child. His mother, a pianist, took him backstage to meet the maestro after a performance in White Plains, N.Y. They shook hands and the experience set Fortier’s mind in the direction of music and the violin.

“It was like a voice,” Fortier said of hearing Heifitz play violin. “The violin pulled me. I used to get goose bumps when I heard that penetrating sound of Heifitz. I reacted physically to it. It permeated my inner being; it was that vibration.”

Fortier’s father was an accomplished banjo player who once performed with Al Jolson when he played the Criterion back in the 1930s.

“I was like a priest,” Fortier said of how he chose music over baseball. “There was music in my blood.”

As the recipient of the Bath Festival Award in 1965 and ’66, Fortier says, “Yehudi Menuhin chose me as the young American fiddler, not only because he liked my playing, but he also knew I had ambitions to start the Bar Harbor Music Festival.”

Menuhin arranged for Fortier’s debut in June 1966. “I was scared out of my mind,” he recalled. “Menuhin was sitting in the front row with his sister, Hephzibah. I was his apprentice.”

But Fortier was a natural with the violin. “In many ways, things that other fiddlers had to be taught, I just did them,” he continued. “I was lucky, this God given gift, I just did it. It was a calling and I never looked back. The temptations were terrible. I could have had quick money. I was a very good baseball player.”

They were scouting the major leagues in Westchester when Fortier was a senior at Bronxville High. He said the scouts saw him as a “dangerous hitter and great defensive first baseman.” They talked to his father, but he said it was his son’s choice.

“I said no,” Fortier says matter-of-factly. “I want a career as a violinist and baseball will preclude that.”

He said that the experience of being an athlete was something he was able to bring to the BHMF. “That’s where I identify as a performer that you have to deal with crowds, like our audience,” he said. “You’re dealing with your own fears that you’re not going to strike out.”

It would seem that Fortier has hit a home run. His festival is now in its 41st year, he has an active touring schedule and has had artist-in-residence status at several schools and universities, most recently at Penn State.

The transition from touring musician to festival organizer can be chaotic at times. He noticed earlier in the week that the 97-degree temperatures in New York had caused the chin rest on his violin to begin to split.

“If this thing collapses it will be the domino theory; it will rip off the tail piece which will knock down the bridge and could take the sounding piece right with it,” Fortier said. “So I ran down to Reny Morel, he’s the number one in the world in New York, and his shop, they’re the only ones in New York that touch this fiddle.”

A new chin rest was built over the next several days, in time for Fortier to bring the violin to Bar Harbor and it’s not just any violin.

“I’m lucky, this was an early Stradivarius, 1689,” he said. “He [Stradivarius] decided to use one slab of curly maple, red maple being one of the hardest woods in the world, and on top of it a softer white pine so the vibrations could penetrate out beyond even the ‘f’ hole openings.”

It has four coats of varnish, which Fortier says,  “stops a raucous sound.” However, it all works, the violin has a heavenly sound.

Fortier came by his violin after taking on a pupil when he was still a student at Juilliard. Henry Hottinger was the pupil, a multimillionaire who was going on a cruise and wanted to play to amuse his friends. “He wasn’t very good,” Fortier said. “Last year, people were wanting to jump overboard in the middle of the Atlantic he played so badly.”

Fortier was a persistent teacher, forcing his student to do detestable scales and etudes till he began to improve.

Hottinger owned a collection of fine instruments and would use these great instruments to practice on. “We’d go into his, like, wine cellar and these instruments were stacked in there like salami.”

Fortier recalled that Hottinger went on the cruise and got a standing ovation when he played. When he returned, he brought two beautiful violins into the lesson and asked Fortier to try each one and tell him which he liked better. One was a good violin, but the other was magnificent. When Fortier told him which one was better, Hottinger gave it to him as a Christmas present. It turned out to be a Stradivarius made in 1689, the one Fortier plays today, the one with the soul.

Fortier will perform his annual recital on July 13 at the Bar Harbor Congregational Church at 8:15 p.m. For information, call 288-5744 or visit www.barharbormusicfestival.org.