Trent Freeman

Musician · Merville, British Columbia, Canada · Also a recording artist
Best known for Fiddle

Trent Freeman is a Canadian fiddler and violist from the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, a founding member of the Fretless, the string quartet of two fiddles, viola and cello whose album Bird’s Nest won the 2017 Juno Award for Instrumental Album of the Year. He also works as a session fiddler, notably with the mandolinist John Reischman, and writes fiddle tunes of his own.

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He grew up in Merville and began on classical violin in nearby Comox, with the teacher Mary Hill, learning by the Suzuki method. A local family gave him his first fiddle lessons, and as a teenager he set out to learn as much fiddle music as he could: Canadian and American old-time, bluegrass, and Irish and Scottish fiddle music. He was a student of the British Columbia fiddler Daniel Lapp, and like his future bandmates he spent his youth at fiddle camps, contests, dances and festivals. He then studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he shared a house with other fiddlers, among them Ivonne Hernandez.

The jam sessions in that house led to the Fretless, formed in 2011 by Freeman, Hernandez, the fiddler Karrnnel Sawitsky and the cellist Eric Wright. Their first album, Waterbound (2012), won Instrumental Album of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards and two Canadian Folk Music Awards, and after Bird’s Nest brought the Juno the band went on to Live from the Art Farm (2018), Open House (2021) and Glasswing (2024), touring across Canada and in Australia and Europe. For Glasswing the four, who had always written their music together, brought in the singer Madeleine Roger as a co-writer. Freeman and Wright also have an electronic band, Speaker Face.

Away from the quartet he has played fiddle for John Reischman since at least 2013, when he was a guest on Reischman’s Walk Along John and played in its release-show band. On Reischman’s New Time & Old Acoustic (2021) he is heard on most of the album, including “Cascadia,” “Horses of Dorrigo,” “The Coyote Trail” and “Happy Hollow.” He was a guest fiddler on the Boston bluegrass band Chasing Blue’s Low Valley (2012) and has recorded with Pharis & Jason Romero, and he has taught at the Vancouver Island Fiddle Camp.

In 2022, by then living in Vancouver, he released Tunes EP Vol. 1, five of his own fiddle tunes, among them “The Weaving Hut,” recorded live off the floor by Adrian Dolan with Reischman on mandolin, Allison de Groot on banjo, Ella Korth and Alan Mackie.

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