Jerry Holland (fiddler)

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Jerry Holland

Jerry Holland (born February 23, 1955) is a noted fiddler who lives on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States to Canadian parents - his father was from New Brunswick and his mother was from Quebec. During his childhood, Jerry was exposed to the music of the large Cape Breton expatriate community in Boston. He began to play the fiddle and step-dance at the age of five, and played at his first square dance at the age of six. He made his television debut in 1962 on the Canadian program Don Messer's Jubilee. By the time he was ten years old, he was playing regularly at dances in the Boston area. Jerry's family made annual summer trips to Cape Breton, and Jerry moved there permanently in 1975.

In his early 20s, Jerry performed with the Cape Breton Symphony, a group of fiddlers that included Winston "Scotty" Fitzgerald, Angus Chisholm, Joe Cormier, Wilfred Gillis and John Donald Cameron. The group appeared regularly on CBC television on The John Allan Cameron Show and other programs. From playing with these much older and more experienced musicians, Jerry gained an appreciation for the traditional style of Cape Breton fiddle music, as well as a repertoire of over a thousand fiddle tunes.

Jerry released his first, self-titled album in 1976. It was his second album, Master Cape Breton Fiddler (1982, re-released on CD in 2001), that made his reputation as a ground-breaking musician. Accompanied by Dave MacIsaac on guitar and Hilda Chiasson on piano, Jerry pioneered a new, more modern sound for Cape Breton music on this album, while still remaining firmly within the Cape Breton tradition. Master Cape Breton Fiddler was a major influence on younger Cape Breton fiddlers such as Howie MacDonald.

Jerry has released eleven albums, and has appeared as a guest musician on over 25 more. He has published two popular collections of fiddle tunes: Jerry Holland's Collection of Fiddle Tunes and Jerry Holland's Second Collection of Fiddle Tunes, both edited by Paul Cranford. He is also noted as a composer of fiddle tunes, most famously "Brenda Stubbert's Reel" (named for his friend and fellow Cape Breton fiddler Brenda Stubbert) and "My Cape Breton Home".

[edit] Trivia

One of the more curious incidents in Jerry Holland's life involves the origin of his fiddle. In 1965, his father spotted a fiddle for sale in the window of a local laundry . Thinking that it looked like "a pretty good fiddle", Jerry Sr. bought it for $50.00 and took it home to his son. Many years later, Jerry discovered that his instrument was actually an extremely rare and valuable violin crafted by Leopold Widhalm, an Austrian luthier who worked in Nürnberg, Germany between 1746 and 1776. No one knows how such a rare antique violin wound up for sale in the window of a Chinese laundry in Boston, but Jerry Holland plays this "pretty good fiddle" at concerts and in recordings to this day.