James Reid – Mill Curator
For inquiries regarding instruments contact our prime founder and instrument curator James Reid.
Contact James : curator@stirlingmill.ca
Recovering from early disagreeable experiences with musical education, James eventually gained access to a guitar. Given an instrument he actually wanted to play and an absence of negative inspiration, he became a passable ‘hack-musician’; a status he maintains and cherishes to this day, over 50 years on.
Finished with high-school, he ran away from home to work in the theatre and began exploration into late ‘60s alternative culture. Time passed, experience gained, skills acquired: many of them still useful!
Throughout it all, James remained strongly connected to music, both the classical composers from his childhood and the music he learned later for himself. He plays guitar, baritone and tenor banjo and has performed as both an amateur and – on occasion – professional musician, and hosted many musical events in the community over the past 10 years. He has been involved as an organizer with the Blue Skies Music Festival (Clarendon, ON) since 1986.
Recalling early experience, he determined that ‘rule #1’ is “if we’re not having fun, we’re not doing it right”. Certainly, in music and he hopes – eventually – he will learn to apply this to everything in life.
Several years ago, he began working on his current passion; this resulted in the 2018 incorporation of the Stirling Musical Instrument Lending Library. Opening to the public in January 2019, the Stirling MILL has been keeping him moderately busy ever since.