Bertram started this festival in 1977, and it’s only fitting that he should be at the 50^th gathering.  He has recorded with an astonishing variety of musicians – Alan Jabbour, Tommy Thompson, James Reed, Frank Ferrel, Peter Ostroushko, and Kirk Sutphin, among others – as well as making the influential solo album, That Old Gut Feeling.

Born in 1941 in New York, Bertram was raised on a piano bench from the age of four.  His discovery of the 5-string banjo when he was 14 was a turning point, resulting in his decision to attend college in Atlanta to be closer to Southern music at its source.  While attending medical school in Durham in the mid 1960’s, Bertram’s neighbor and fellow graduate student Alan Jabbour introduced him to the music of Virginia fiddler Henry Reed.  Eight-six years-old at the time, Reed had been mentored by Jacksonian-era fiddler and fifer Quince Dillon.  Inspired by Reed’s beautiful settings and his musical lineage, Alan, Bertram, and Tommy and Bobbie Thompson formed the Hollow Rock String Band with a mission to play only fiddle tunes collected directly from the local Piedmont fiddlers.  The group played every week for several years, appeared at the regional bluegrass conventions throughout North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, and were credited by the Smithsonian for launching the old-time Appalachian fiddle revival.

It was during these years that Bertram embraced a lifelong mission to preserve this nearly forgotten music.  He personally visited and collected from some of the greatest fiddle luminaries of the early 20^th century – including Henry Reed, Oscar Wright, Taylor Kimble, Tommy Jarrell, Fred Cockerham, Lee Triplett, and Burl Hammonds – and eventually became a Johnny Appleseed of their music.  Over the next 60 years, Bertram taught these tunes and their lore to countless musicians, including his daughter Madeline, which has been a great joy for them both.

Madeline, who will join Bertram at this anniversary festival, was raised in a household permeated with old-time music.  Like her father, Madeline started playing an instrument at four years old – in her case, the fiddle.  From an early age, she learned the 19^th century tune versions and the driving Piedmont bowing style by playing twin fiddles with her father.  Although Madeline was also trained classically throughout high school, it is the old-time American fiddle music with her father that is their shared musical DNA.  Madeline is the fifth person in the unbroken chain of direct oral transfer of music beginning in the Jacksonian period and spanning two centuries.  Together, Bertram and Madeline have performed concerts, toured festivals and played dances as a banjo-fiddle duo and even previously appeared on the Centrum stage together with Alan Jabbour when Madeline was eight years old.  When Madeline is not playing the fiddle, she is a PhD candidate in religion and history with a soft spot for opera, given her previous career in opera stage management.

Over the decades, Bertram has pursued other musical passions as well, including an intense dedication to the study of the Argentine tango and its emblematic instrument: the bandoneon.  Now in his mid 80s, he continues to actively create and perform new music on the nylon string banjo, concertina, and bandoneon.  In the words of Centrum board President Walter Parsons, “Bertram is an inspirational musician, voyager, builder, and healer.  We’re proud of his continuing involvement in Fiddle Tunes and of his decades of profound care and attention to Centrum and its founding vision to preserve culture and tradition and pass this heritage from one generation to the next.”