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Family Harmonica Workshop to feature Mark ‘Bird’ Stafford during Orangeville Blues and Jazz

June 4, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Sam Odrowski

Mark “Bird” Stafford can still remember handing over $5 for his first harmonica as a child in the 1960s. Decades later, the veteran blues performer and educator is sharing that passion with others through a free drop-in workshop designed for everyone from complete beginners to seasoned players.

The Orangeville Public Library’s Mill Street Branch will host Stafford at noon on Saturday, June 6, where he will teach techniques, provide demonstrations, and take questions from the audience.

He said the session is open to just about anything related to the instrument.

“It’s going to be everything harmonica,” he said.

From performing blues across Ontario and the East Coast to repairing instruments out of his home studio, very few people in the province know the harmonica as intimately as Stafford. He was drawn to it from a young age.

“I remember sitting in the back of my parents’ car listening to AM radio, and the music bug hit me really early,” Stafford said.

“I remember my father turning around and looking at me in the back seat, saying, ‘Wow, you can actually sing.’”

Stafford’s journey with the harmonica began after he spent $5 on a Marine Band harmonica, which now costs around $75.

“There’s a big learning curve with harmonica, to learn how to bend notes. I started listening to a lot of blues and hearing harmonica sounds that I couldn’t reproduce. I kept trying to figure out why my harmonica didn’t sound the same as the harmonicas I was hearing on records,” he said

“All these things are what somebody in the audience of my workshop could bring to the table and say, ‘What’s this about playing a C harp in the key of G? What’s that all about?’”

Participants may get a chance to see one of the more unusual instruments in Stafford’s arsenal — a bass harmonica recently gifted to him by a 95-year-old veteran player from Toronto.

“He wanted this harmonica to go to somebody that was still playing, and that’s me,” he explained.

Weighing several pounds and carried in a briefcase, the instrument is a far cry from the pocket-sized harmonicas many people are familiar with.

“Harmonicas have been around for hundreds of years, and some of them are super unique — that’s something I’ve always been interested in, and I’ve restored some older harmonicas,” Stafford noted. For the workshop, he encourages attendees to bring harmonicas, even if they don’t work as well as they used to.

“Maybe there’s an old harmonica in the drawer that grandpa used to own. Maybe somebody would like me to look at it and just sort of assess what might need to be done — there are people that can fix some harmonicas, and I’m one of them.”

The workshop is for everyone, with Stafford encouraging the younger generation to stop by.

“Bring the family. I’m very much an advocate of getting music into kids’ ears these days,” Stafford said.

“If the kids drop by, they can get a feel for what the harmonica is all about. They’ll remember it. I’m pretty sure they’ll remember me, and they’ll remember the harmonica.”

But beyond the techniques and the history, Stafford said the real point of Saturday is simpler than all of it.

“There’s a certain kind of blood rush that you get from playing a song on the harmonica,” he said.

He’s been feeling it since he was a kid, and during the workshop on Saturday, he’s hoping to pass it on.

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