Jean Carignan

Jean Carignan ( Ti-Jean Carignan ; born December 7, 1916 in Lévis , † February 16, 1988 in Delson ) was a Canadian fiddle player and is considered the most important representative of Celtic Music in Canada.

Carignan learned to play fiddle from his father in early childhood and was already performing as a street musician in his hometown at the age of five. After he moved to Québec with his family, he learned the shoemaking trade, was a student of Joseph Allard from 1927 to 1931 and learned the repertoire of the Irish fiddler Michael Coleman and the Scottish James Scott Skinner . He then played violin, clarinet and saxophone for five years with George Wade and His Cornhuskers , a country band from Toronto, with whom he also made recordings. After his return to Québec, he led the band of the St-André Dance Hall until 1954 . He played in the Bob Hill dance orchestra until 1956 , after which he decided to only appear in concerts and festivals.

Since the early 1960s, his musical partner was the folk singer Alan Mills . With this he performed in 1960 at Carnegie Hall and took part in the Newport Folk Festival , the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the Mariposa Folk Festival . In his later years, the pianist and fiddler Gilles Losier was his companion. When a wooden bust of Carignan by sculptor George Morisette was unveiled in Ascot Corner in 1973 , 400 Fiddlers from across North America gathered for the occasion. In 1974 he was awarded the Order of Canada as the "greatest fiddler in North America" .

In 1975 Bernard Gosselin made the documentary Jean Carignan, violoneux . In the program Veillée québécoise at the Théâtre Maisonneuve in Montreal, Carignan directed an orchestra in 1976, in which his brothers Marcel and Rodolphe also played. In the same year wrote André Gagnon for him et Petit Concerto pour Carignan orchestra , a concerto for violin and fiddle, which he in 1979 with Yehudi Menuhin in the CBC telecast The Music of Man aufführte.

In 1978 Carignan played in the ballet Suite Carignan by the choreographer Brian Macdonald , which Donald Patriquin had composed from his music. Because of increasing hearing loss, he had to end his musical career. Carignan's repertoire comprised more than 7000 reels, jigs and other dances, many of which he recorded on record. A three-part CD set containing 104 songs recorded in 1976 was released by Disques Tout Crin and the Canadian Museum of Civilization in 1998.

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• The Canadian Encyclopedia - Jean Carignan
• Boston Globe, December 2, 2016: Recalling Jean Carignan, a French-Canadian treasure who had to keep his day job
• Smithonian Folkways - Jean Carignan (discography)