PORTLAND – Tom Rowe, who played bass and sang in the popular folk trio Schooner Fare, died Saturday at the age of 53.

Rowe, an Auburn resident, had been undergoing treatment for throat cancer.

Rowe and brothers Steve and Chuck Romanoff performed across North America for 28 years, making Schooner Fare one of Maine’s most enduring musical groups.

“Tom has – had – a brilliant ear for both playing and singing, and he was a tenor who played bass,” Steve Romanoff said Sunday. “A very rare combination. He played brilliant bass and sang the high parts.”

Last month, the weekend before Rowe entered the hospital, Schooner Fare performed at The Barns at Wolf Trap, a renowned venue in Virginia. The band has played at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and in cities across the country and in Canada.

The future of the band is unknown.

A father of five, Rowe played bass clarinet with the Auburn Community Band, was choir director of his church in Auburn and was a recording engineer.

Rowe also performed with another trio, called Turkey Hollow Consort, that included his son Dave and Denny Breau. The group was named after the section of Auburn where Rowe had lived since 1957. He and Dave also played as the duo Rowe by Rowe.

How did Rowe feel about his son following in his musical footsteps?

“I’m very proud that he had the chops to do it, and wanted to do it after watching me all these years,” Rowe told the Bangor Daily News in a 2000 interview. “It can be a tough row to hoe, and I had some trepidation. But he’s a sharp kid, and he’s doing fine.”

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.