About Us

The Gatineau Hills Fiddle Festival (GHFF) is a traditional music festival held annually in Chelsea, QC, Canada. It was founded by Kyle Burghout and James Stephens, in collaboration with local youth fiddle group Fiddleheads Musical Theatre, in 2018. The GHFF presents an annual festival every October, as well as individual concerts and workshops occurring throughout the year. The festival features guest traditional musicians from across Canada, the USA, and abroad, while also placing an emphasis on featuring local musicians from the Ottawa-Gatineau region and from the province of Québec. In 2023, the GHFF incorporated as a non-profit organization, and is now supported by a board of directors to help ensure the continued success of the festival. 

The mission of the GHFF is to promote traditional fiddle music in the local community by presenting concerts, workshops, and jam sessions as part of an annual festival. Engaging youth is also an important part of the GHFF, whose original purpose was to provide local youth fiddlers with an opportunity to learn from and perform alongside world-class musicians, whom they would not usually have the opportunity to work with. This remains a core value of the GHFF; every year the festival provides local youth musicians with scholarships to attend the festival and has featured local youth musicians and bands at festival concerts.