Festival Activities
CONCERTS
As is our tradition, the Main Stage Concerts take place under the tent, evenings and afternoons, from Friday to Sunday.
TRAINING
COURSES
2-day Fiddle Workshops offered by 3 renowned teachers for beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.
THEMATIC
WORKSHOPS
Festival artists meet on stage and take turns sharing a tune with their colleagues and audience members.
MASTER
CLASSES
Advanced classes and talks with Festival artists, focused on sharing their unique experience and their approach to their practice.
DANCES
Traditional dance evenings (Balfolk and Quebec traditional dance) with live music provided by Festival artists.
JAM SESSIONS
Traditional music jam sessions take place during the day as well as at the end of the evening, in a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere for all levels!
2024 Teachers
Fiddle training courses, three levels
AUGUST 15TH AND 16TH 2024
ALASDAIR
FRASER
Distinguished Scottish violinist
Alasdair Fraiser
AUGUST 15TH TO 18TH 2024
Alasdair Fraser, one of the most respected Scottish fiddlers, has a concert and recording career that spans over 30 years, with a long list of awards, honors, radio and television credits, and performances on the best film soundtracks (The Last of the Mohicans, Titanic, etc.).
In 2011, he was made member of the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame. Through the four summer programs that Alasdair founded at the Scottish Violin School, he teaches master classes and workshops for performers of all ages, levels and instruments, with an emphasis on the linguistic nature and rhythmic momentum of traditional music. Several different themes are available, including: finding your own voice on your instrument, learning to groove, playing together, arrangement, creativity and improvisation, and working with small chamber orchestras. The emphasis is on inclusion and creating community through music creation. He knows how to create a place of learning where teaching is done by ear.
LIETTE
REMON
Master of tradition
Liette Remon
AUGUST 15TH TO 18TH 2024
Violinist and singer Liette Remon has created shows and founded different bands that draw their inspiration from tradition (Fanfare Monfarleau, Bobelo, Talencourt, Histoires de femmes à l'oeuvre, Les Passeurs d'airs). She also participates in various world music projects with the Strada company. In 2021, she received the title of Master of Living Traditions awarded by the Conseil québécois du patrimoine vivant.
“I learned the violin with my father Réginald who had learned it from his turlute-signing mother and his Bernatchez grandparents from the Rang des 28 in Grande-Rivière, Gaspésie. On my mother's side, at the Leblanc family home in St-François-de-Pabos, between Chandler and Grande Rivière, my grandfather Diogenes and his 15 children all sang and played an instrument: organ, piano, violin, accordion and harmonica. It is not a professional path, but it is the exceptional region from which I come and which determined my passion for music."
JEAN-MARIE
VERRET
Bearer of tradition
Jean-Marie Verret
AUGUST 15TH TO 18TH 2024
Many Quebecers born before the Quiet Revolution remember Saturday evening vigils punctuated by the sounds of the violin and the accordion. Privileged witnesses of this era anchored in popular imagery, four generations of the Verrets from Lac-Saint-Charles have perpetuated a musical repertoire bearing lots of tradition.
In 1952, Jean-Marie Verret, at the age of seven, listened to his grandfather Jean-Baptiste (1894-1955) and his father Jules (1916-1982), each adding a folkloric atmosphere to many evenings. He takes taste for this music transmitted orally from generation to generation, without any notes or partitions. Today, Jean-Marie is the guardian of an important repertoire of pieces from our Quebec heritage, many of them having never been recorded or transcribed.
Jean-Marie inherited this musical background. He estimates he knows some 2000 pieces, also drawing to other sources and creating his own compositions.
A virtuoso violinist and talented composer, many see him as the most Quebecois of our fiddlers. His musical repertoire is extensive and highlights the quadrille tunes of the 19th and early of the 20th century.
Our Local Partners
Fondation Boulanger-Bedard
Fondation Beaulieu-Saucier