Thérèse Albert
Kith Folk
"La musique, c'est toute my vie": that pretty much sums up Thérèse (Landry) Albert's love of music and life. She was born April 24, 1926 in St. Anne de Bocage, New Brunswick. Her family was musical and her father played the fiddle at musical events and weddings to supplement the family income. When she was 13, Thérèse borrowed her father's fiddle and learned to play a few tunes. When her father found out, he was overjoyed and Thérèse went on to celebrate a lifetime of music. She married Gilles Albert in 1947 and put away the fiddle for almost 30 years while her kids were growing up. In 1979 under the encouragement of her husband (who played harmonica) and with the fiddle her father had left her when he died, she entered a fiddle competition in Lamèque. Despite the fact that it was mostly men who played fiddle publicly, she won the competition and went on to play concerts and festivals all over the Acadian peninsula, where she was often the only female fiddler. In 1991 she took part in a television program "Le Temps de Vivre" that was recorded at the Le Village Acadien. She continued to perform at the Acadian village for a number of years.