Colette Fournier

Colette Fournier was born and raised in a family that cherished its French traditions, and she learned music and songs at home from an early age. She increased her repertoire through a two-year apprenticeship with Ben Guillemette in Maine and with Rosaire Lehoux of Connecticut during the first year of the Southern New England Apprenticeship Project, and later with fiddler Donna Hebert in Year 9 (2006-2007) and Dan Boucher in Year 10 (2007-2008). Colette regularly organizes quadrille dances in the French communities in Connecticut and Rhode Island and performs with the group La Sauterie with her sister and a niece. She continues to teach fiddle playing to others in various community settings. Colette's grandfather made and played Franco fiddles, she remembers. She has studied with Ben Guillemette from Maine, and learned some of Rosaire's "tunes with no names and the crooked tunes - with an odd number of beats in the A or B parts" during her Year 1 apprenticeship with him. The French Canadian fiddle apprenticeships were instrumental in bringing these musicians together to play all around New England.