Artist Category: Nordic

Ale Möller

After more than 50 years of touring the world and more than 50 albums and 1200 registered compositions, acclaimed multi-musician Ale Möller is still a central figure on the Nordic folk- and world music scene in the search for new musical paths and expressions.

Trying to list all the prizes and awards Ale Möller has received over the years is as impossible as listing all the instruments he masters. Multiple Grammy winner, certified legend and professor. He has received both royal medals and the Swedish government’s Export Honor Award and is an internationally recognized artist with star status worldwide. In 2014, he was awarded the former Beatles producer George Martin’s prestigious Sir George Martin Music Award and the heavy Lifetime Achievement Award shares Ale Möller, as the first artist in the Nordics, with names such as Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte.

What started with a trumpet and a youthful relationship with jazz continued in a passionate love affair with Greek folk music and then landed in a deep relationship with Nordic folk music. Ale Möller creates his own musical universe, known for his many projects and collaborations across genre and cultural boundaries. Regardless of the genre, Ale Möller works his way into the source code of the music he encounters and he obtains an almost unique legendary status for how he expanded the concept of folk and traditional music for decades.

Skye Consort & Emma Björling

Skye Consort & Emma Björling perform trans-Atlantic music from Scandinavia, Ireland and the British Isles, French-Canada, and tunes of their own devising. They find enchanting stories and melodies, then bring them into the 21st century with worldly chamber-folk settings.

Voices, fiddle, nyckelharpa, cello, bouzouki, banjo, and percussion riffing on whirling polskas, groovy reels, passionate love songs, breathtaking hymns, and original compositions.

Skye Consort and Emma met during a La Nef project in Montréal in October 2017. At the end of the project a HUGE storm in Iceland cancelled all of the flights from North America to Europe. Emma and the members of Skye consort spent the next several days listening to tunes, jamming, and joking about starting a band. By the time Emma went home, the BAND had actually been STARTED!

Emma Björling (lead voice, percussion & shruti box) is an award-winning Swedish singer, composer, and arranger, active in the renowned Scandinavian bands Kongero and Lyy. She has toured the world with numerous bands and stays busy on the European folk/trad scene. Emma is a board member of NASC (North Atlantic Song Community) and conducts workshops all over the world.

Seán Dagher (lead voice, Irish bouzouki & banjo) is an active performer, arranger, and composer of music from various folk and classical music traditions. He plays with The Swindlers, The Reese Witherspoons, and Gairloch, and is co-artistic director of La Nef. Seán is the curator of the Zone Musique Place d’Armes summer music series and has provided music for video games including the Assassin’s Creed series. You might have heard him singing on Black Flag and the others.

Amanda Keesmaat (cello & vocals) is a vibrant presence in the Montréal early music community. She has recorded and performed with many prominent singers, instrumental soloists, and renowned ensembles. She is the founder of Space Time Continuo and a regular collaborator with La Nef. She has toured extensively in North and South America and in Europe.

Alex Kehler (fiddle, nyckelharpa & vocals) is a member of Triton, La Nef, Soulwood, Kehler-Williams duo, and Les Siffleurs de nuits. Alex is one of the leading nyckelharpa players in Canada, is a much-coveted teacher at camps and courses, and is a ubiquitous presence playing for dances around Québec and New England.

Simon Alexandre (fiddle, nyckelharpa & vocals) is an accomplished chamber musician and orchestral violinist. He plays with the Ximenez String Quartet and is a member of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Québec. At age 17, he moved to Sweden to study nyckelharpa. He plays in the violin, nyckelharpa, and Hardanger fiddle in the folk duo La Traverse.

Fredy Clue

Fredy Clue’s music digs deep into people’s hearts and helps them make room for healing and love. After ten years of experience performing on stage, Fredy Clue appears with their own music arranged for Palaver Strings. Fredy meets the audience with their Nyckelharpa and voice, instruments and beats. Together they lift Swedish folk music into a queer world of poetry and emotions. Together with the team of the small and legendary Kakafon Records from Sweden, Fredy released their debut EP on June 2, 2023.

https://fredyclue.com/home

Kongero

Kongero is: Anna Wikénius, Sofia Hultqvist Kott, Lotta Andersson, and Emma Björling

Kongero is a highly esteemed, world touring Swedish Folk’appella group singing powerful, evocative, haunting music. A concert with Kongero will take the listener on a fabulous journey, an all-embracing Scandinavian folk music experience. Amazing vocal polyphony, groovy, and powerful. We released our 6th album “Live in Longueuil” in the summer 2021 and it’s been so well-received!

We push the boundaries in trad/folk/world music as well as in a cappella and chamber music. We feel it’s important to share this passion with others. By conducting our workshops and master classes we make great music and long-lasting connections with singers wherever we go. To share is to gain something new, and by sharing our tradition, knowledge, and passion we get lots of positive energy, love, and powerful musical experiences.

This journey has, since 2005, resulted in extensive touring all over Europe, Canada, Barbados, and Singapore. We have done official showcases at Folk Alliance International, Nordic Folk Alliance, Nordic Showcase, Bourse Rideau, and we are an official participant of Global Music Match 2022.

Lena Jonsson

Lena Jonsson’s ability to balance a deep knowledge of traditional Swedish folk music with innovative artistic sensibilities, sparkling joy of life and a charisma of a rock-star have made her one Scandinavia’s most visionary musicians. She has created a unique style inspired by traditional Swedish music as well as rock, pop and American old-time and bluegrass traditions. Together with guitarist Erik Ronström and bassist Krydda Sundström they create a virtuosic yet playful trio. In April 2023 the trio won Artist of the year at the Swedish Folk awards. Their album Stories from the Outside won both a Swedish Grammis and the Manifest prize in 2021 and Album of the year by LIRA Music Magazine and song of the year by Swedish radio. Lena Jonsson Trio released their third album Elements in June 2023.

Kevin Henderson

Kevin Henderson is a fiddler who draws on the rich fiddle music tradition of his native Shetland and his experience with leading bands including Boys of the Lough, Fiddlers Bid, Session A9 and Nordic Fiddlers Bloc to create an expressive and adventurously individual musical style.

Brought up in the Shetland schooling system, whose concentration on fiddle music and encouragement to participate still inspire him, Kevin benefited in his teens from the teaching of the legendary Willie Hunter. Lessons with Hunter could comprise chatting over coffee and biscuits and even extend to being taught survival skills, as well as learning both the essentials and the finer points of playing Shetland reels, and every Saturday Kevin came away motivated to emulate his mentor.

With school friends Chris Stout, Andrew Gifford and Maurice Henderson, Kevin formed Fiddlers Bid, a band that – almost thirty years, innumerable gigs and four enthusiastically received albums on – continues to represent the finest of Shetland fiddling allied with harmonic invention, creative subtlety and enthusiastic vigour.

It was Kevin’s clear understanding of and feeling for the Shetland tradition that led to him being invited, in 2001, to join the long-established Irish-Scottish band Boys of the Lough, alongside the Irish national treasure Cathal McConnell, an experience that has enriched his musical appreciation and love for a strong melody.

Since moving to Norway, while maintaining links with the Boys, the Bid and Session A9, one of Scotland’s finest fiddle ensembles, Kevin has put his heart and soul into Nordic Fiddlers Bloc, a meeting of three very distinctive musical styles where simplicity and directness are key. Their blend of Norwegian, Swedish and Shetland accents and their command of varying tones and voicings have led to ecstatic receptions on both sides of the North Sea and across the Atlantic.

While he still values the demanding Scott Skinner and Canadian tunes he studied in his early years, Kevin has come to favour sparer melodic forms and is increasingly interested in the spontaneity of jazz and improvised music. His duos with Swedish guitarist and mandola player Mattias Perez, who featured on Kevin’s first solo album, Fin Da Laand Ageen, in 2011, and American pianist Neil Pearlman feature more spontaneous interpretations of original compositions and traditional tunes.

When not touring, performing and recording Kevin enjoys passing on his fiddle skills through fiddle camps, including those organised by Nordic Fiddlers Bloc, Danish fiddler Harald Haugaard and California-based Scottish fiddle master Alasdair Fraser, and one-to-one sessions.

Wherever he travels, Kevin remains very much a Shetlander, staying connected to the islands through playing an instrument made by Shetland’s leading luthier, Ewen Thomson.

The Nordic Fiddlers Bloc

From the moment Kevin Henderson, Olav Luksengård Mjelva and Anders Hall of The Nordic Fiddlers Bloc first played together in 2009 they felt a particular chemistry in the sound they created.

Some seven hundred gigs later, playing across Scandinavia, mainland Europe, the U.S. and the UK, that chemistry continues to draw the trio together.

Passion is a word that comes up often in conversation with Henderson, Mjelva and Hall. It’s a word that lies behind the trio’s determination to find exactly the right tunes to play and exactly the right way to play a certain phrase (Henderson has been known to find forty different examples of them playing the same motif stored on his mobile phone from rehearsals). Passion for the music they make is also what makes them endure forty-two-hour flights that should only have taken two – to – three hours to get to a concert rather than let the promoter and audience down.

Hundreds of tunes have been tried and laid aside in The Nordic Fiddlers Bloc’s quest for the music which on two albums, their self-titled debut from 2011 and Deliverance, from 2016, has charmed listeners in the same way that their live performances beguile and satisfy.

In the beginning they were intrigued. For Henderson, who grew up in the fiddle-rich tradition of the Shetland Islands, there was a mystery in hearing his Scandinavian colleagues harmonise with one another. Although Fiddlers’ Bid, the Shetland group he has played with since his teens and continues to work with, create a harmonious, four-fiddle sound, the Swedish tradition of having one fiddle play a melody and another shadowing it with a harmony line, was something new to him.

The jamming sessions that led to the threesome coalescing into a group showed them that they could not only create a unique sound, they also had a richness, helped by their use of standard fiddles, octave fiddle, viola and Hardanger fiddle, that has led to them being likened to a string quartet rather than just a trio.

Folk music promoters and festivals internationally have picked up on the Bloc’s uniqueness. They have played at major events including Tønder Festival in Denmark, Scotland’s mammoth Celtic Connections winter music festival, Cape Breton’s prestigious Celtic Colours, and the annual A Celtic Christmas Sojourn in Boston.

Recognition, including a Norwegian Folk Award and a place in Songlines magazine’s Top of the World selection for their first album, has come their way and as fellow musicians including Dutch jazz violinist Tim Kliphuis invite them to participate in events such as his Rotterdam Fiddle Weekend, the trio have opened their ears to future possibilities in the jazz and classical spheres.

As dedicated tradition bearers, they have also created their own annual fiddle camp, which has taken place in Norway (2018) and Sweden (2019) and is due to visit Shetland next.

“On the evidence to hand, pure fiddle doesn’t get much better than The Nordic Fiddlers Bloc.” Folkworld

Laurel Premo

Laurel Premo is known for her rhythmically deep and rapt delivery of roots music on fiddle, guitar, and vocals. Her solo performances dive deep into traditional and new fiddle music, musically revealing a bloom of underlying harmonic drones, minimalist repetition, and rich polyrhythms. Presenting these sounds on finger style electric guitar and fiddle, Premo fully leans in to the archaic melodies and in-between intonations that connect folk sounds to the mystic and unknown.

She is a Michigan-based artist who has been writing, arranging, and touring since 2009 with vocal and instrumental roots acts, and is internationally known from her duo Red Tail Ring. Premo holds a BFA from the Performing Arts Technology Dept. of the University of Michigan School of Music, and has spent half-year stints at both the Sibelius Academy of Music in Helsinki, Finland and the University College of Southeast Norway in Telemark to study traditional music and dance. Important mentors who have helped shape Laurel’s lens in folk arts have been her parents Bette & Dean Premo (fiddle, guitar, and traditional song, Michigan), Joel Mabus (clawhammer banjo, Michigan), Arto Järvelä (fiddle, Finland), and Ånon Egeland (fiddle, Norway). Alongside several continuing music projects, she is active in organizing community events that connect people with folk art and dance.

Frigg

It’s February 2000. The new millennium is taking its first breaths, the fuss and excitement slowly subsides, and the world did not end after all! A group of teenage folk music enthusiasts spend a weekend shut away in Pelimannitalo, a folk music house in Kaustinen – the heart of Finnish folk music. Violins are played, musical thoughts flying about, new songs learned with gusto. A true passion for traditional Nordic music is audible, visible and aglow! The first demo tapes are recorded, and the future is being planned. This group starts calling itself Frigg.

The band’s line-up is established as an ensemble of four violins, string instruments and a double bass. In the spring of 2002, the band’s first album is published, and Frigg is becoming a popular topic of discussion amongst the Nordic folk music circles. As the Nordics become ever smaller, European folk music events quickly become familiar to the band.

Frigg’s pace only accelerates and a hunger for more grows. Their music is living and taking on new directions and nuances. Audiences are in awe of the band’s ability to transport listeners to traditional Finnish polska, bluegrass and Balkan rhythms and all the way to the dynamics of classical music, as if there were multiple groups performing on stage! The tight ensemble performance and a candid stage presence work. Frigg is able to turn their gigs into a scenic experience, giving their listeners a break from the greyness of the world.

Frigg will go on to visit the WOMAD Festival at the invitation of the BBC, visit the Rainforest World Music Festival in the rainforests of Borneo, and tour Japan and Australia. The joyful Nordic folk music laced with Bluegrass is a knockout in North America and one state after the other get their share of Frigg fever. As icing on the cake, Frigg is invited to perform at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival along with the best of the best in Roots music. In addition to their own concerts, the band performs spectacular projects together with symphony orchestras, choirs and brass bands. New music is released at a steady pace, with albums repeatedly appearing in the listings and raving album reviews of fRoots, Songlines, Rhythms.au and numerous other world music portals.

And now, after two decades, ten albums, around a thousand gigs in thirty countries and tens of thousands of kilometers travelled, that same passion still burns. The hypnotic combination of that now-famous violin sound, the irresistible forward-pushing strum of string instruments and the pulse from the double bass, all together continue to create new paths. Just like the steady flow of a mountain stream in the springtime, the origins of which are precisely known.

Hannah O’Brien & Grant Flick

Hannah O’Brien and Grant Flick play a mix of original compositions and traditional pieces from various fiddling traditions. Initially connecting at the University of Michigan, they found common ground despite coming from different backgrounds with Hannah from Classical and Irish fiddling and Grant from American improvisational idioms. In 2021 they released their first duo record, Windward, and look forward to releasing their second record Unmatched Pair in August 2024.

The duo has received multiple prizes including the Binkow Chamber Music Grant, U-M Excel Enterprise Grant, and the Club Passim Iguana Music Fund, as well as participating in the Honeywell Arts Resonance Week as Festival Artists.

While the duo feels at home on double fiddle, they also change instrumentation incorporating tenor guitar and nyckelharpa. Their musical interests are broad and as a result, their programs showcase an eclectic assemblage of repertoire.