Feature Article September 9, 2004
LAND O' LAKES NewsWeb HomeContact Us
A celebration of the life and music of Bernie JaffeBy Jeff Green
Bernie Jaffe, a fiddle player, teacher, songwriter, and lover of swing and old tyme music, died of cancer at the beginning of this year. But friends and fellow musicians in Eastern Ontario and throughout the rest of the
country have certainly not forgotten him.
This Sunday, Sept. 12, in Tamworth, a series of events will take place to celebrate his life and raise funds for a planned annual fiddle workshop series in the village. Events will be kicked off with a square dance at
the parking lot of the Old firehall in Tamworth at 2:00 pm, followed by performances on two stages between about 3 and 7 pm at the Tamworth Legion and the Town Hall. Among the performers will be Gordon Stobbe from Nova Scotia, who has made a career teaching and performing traditional North American fiddle music and was a close friend of Bernie's. Other performers will include Russel deCarle and Joan Besen from Prairie Oyster, Roger James, Carolyn Stewart, Henry Heilig (formerly of Mantecca and now of the Heilig Manoeuvre) Johhny Pearl, Chris Cuddy, Flambe', (Greg and Ginny Forbes) Hicks and Dawe, John and Michelle Law, Bob Robertson, Bobby Watson and the Jaffe/St. Jean Trio, among others.
The performers all shared Bernie Jaffe's love of great swing, country, jazz, and folk tunes.
Bernie Jaffe moved to Ontario from New York State in 1967, and established himself in the Toronto folk music scene as a guitar player. He picked up the fiddle in 1972, and has played on stage and on recordings with Prairie Oyster, Stan Rogers, David Wilcox, Nancy White and a host of others.
He grew up on a farm, and as early as 1970 he was thinking about leaving Toronto, buying a tract of land on the Arden road that straddled Kennebec and Sheffield Townships. He moved there with his partner Faun Bank in 1977. They built a log house and lived in it with no electricity or running water for nine years, before moving to Tamworth in 1986.
In Tamworth Bernie kept playing and writing music and established himself as a special kind of teacher, by demystifying fiddle playing, seeing what his students wanted to get out of their lessons, and helping them to get where they wanted to go musically. He taught children and adults, including older retired people who had always wanted to play but never had the time in the past.
In 2001 Bernie Jaffe established the Stone Mills Studio in Tamworth, where he taught music and repaired instruments, a skill he'd picked up years earlier in Toronto, and began recording music as well. An abiding interest in swing music led to the formation of the Jaffe St.-Jean trio. When he was diagnosed with cancer last November, Bernie Jaffe was in the middle of two recordings, a swing CD called Keep it Simple with the Jaffe-St. Jean Trio, and Bernies Tunes.
Two days before he died, Keith Glass came to visit, and with a few other people, including fiddler Gordon Stobbe, Bernie was brought over to his studio. For three hours they all listened to the recorded tracks. Bernie and Keith Glass discussed how to do the final mix. Faun, Rick St Jean, Keith Glass and Carolyn Butts worked together to complete the CD.
Keep it Simple and Bernie's Tunes, a collection of mostly original tunes, will both be available at the Celebration in Tamworth on Sunday.
All of the proceeds from the event will go to the Bernie Jaffe Music Fund, which will fund fiddle workshops with Gordon Stobbe in Tamworth. Tickets are $10; $7 for youth 13-18 years old, and children 13 and under are free. There is a family rate of $25.
