Artist Category: Nordic

Fränder

FRÄNDER blends Swedish and Estonian folk traditions with a modern twist, creating a contemporary “heavy folk” sound. The result is a driving, robust, utterly unique sound, ready for the great stages. FRÄNDER conjures an expressive musical landscape, evocative of the mystery and beauty of the ancient Scandinavian woodlands and they have wowed audiences worldwide, from Scandinavia to Japan, Canada and USA.

The band’s current tour lineup features founding siblings Gabbi Dluzewski (Swedish mandola and vocals) and Daniel Dluzewski (double bass and vocals), playing alongside Gabbi’s wife Säde Tatar (flute and vocals), the percussionist expert Andreas Berglund (specialized on Japanese classical marimba), and the stellar fiddler and family friend Gabriella Josefsson. On their most recent album, II, FRÄNDER continues to redefine the future of European music.

Symbio

The Swedish phenomenon ”Symbio” is regarded as one of the most prominent bands from the progressive Folk & World music scene today. Hearing this symphonic duo will make you doubt the fact that they are only two musicians on stage. This is music that you have never heard before — prepare for a mesmerizing and immersive live experience.

After 10 years on the road together, Symbio has toured extensively in more than 20 countries across Europe and North America. With an electrifying stage presence and heartfelt musical storytelling, they are known for captivating audiences wherever they go. Their latest album Endeavour is a cinematic journey where soulful melodies, dreamy soundscapes and hypnotic beats depict life-affirming themes. The album was awarded ”Best Album of the Year” at the Swedish Folk & World Music Awards 2023.

Symbio is:
Johannes Geworkian Hellman: hurdy-gurdy, electronics
LarsEmil Öjeberget: accordion, beats, electronics

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 arrangements of songs and tunes from Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Scotland, England, Québec, Acadia, the USA, as well as original compositions. Each musician brings their own individual interpretation to these traditions to create this extraordinary collaboration, consisting of voices, fiddle, nyckelharpa, cello, bouzouki, banjo, and percussion. Collectively, the band presents an assortment of whirling polskas, groovy reels, passionate love songs, breathtaking hymns, and original compositions.

Skye Consort was formed in 1999, has performed and toured extensively, and has 8 full-length albums. In late 2018, Skye Consort, in collaboration with Emma Björling, created a new repertoire grown from Scandinavian, Québecois and Celtic roots. The recording was released on LEAF Music in May 2019 and is distributed worldwide on Naxos. Their self-titled debut album, Skye Consort & Emma Björling, won the OPUS (QC, Canada) award for best world music album 2020.

The second collaborative recording between Skye Consort and Emma Björling, entitled Ode & Ballade, features Emma Björling (lead voice, percussion), Seán Dagher (lead voice, Irish bouzouki, banjo), Amanda Keesmaat (cello, voice), Simon Alexandre (nyckelharpa, violin, voice), and Alex Kehler (nyckelharpa, violin, voice) on the album, also composing and arranging. The musicians sing in three languages (Swedish, French, English), and the words “ode” and “ballade” resonate with meaning in all three: poem, song, tale, sonnet, folly, chant, and dance. The music of this album combines elements from world music and classical traditions to offer audiences thoughtful arrangements and creative compositions: a Swedish Polska accompanied by Québec foot percussion and 18th-century Scottish-style chords, a French song with Norwegian-sounding interludes between the verses, a Purcell/Playford-style dance tune with Swedish texts and accompanied on the banjo. About half of the repertoire is original compositions by the members of Skye Consort & Emma Björling and all are original arrangements for this formation.

The touring configuration of the band presents 4 musicians from the Ode & Ballade recording, featuring either Alex Kehler -or- Simon Alexandre on nyckelharpa, fiddle, and voice.

The genre, dubbed “trans-Atlantic Chamber Folk” by Lyra Magazine (Sweden), creates a sound that is unique among folk artists and classical chamber ensembles. Through the group’s love of different folk traditions and baroque styles, they uncover and present many haunting texts and sonic elements from different worlds that take audiences on an unforgettable journey.

All within the group are seasoned instructors eager to share their knowledge and love for their musical traditions in workshops and school programs.

Emma Björling (lead voice, shruti box, percussion) is an award-winning Swedish singer, composer, arranger, active in the renowned Scandinavian bands Kongero and Lyy. Both bands have toured the world, and are busy in the European folk-trad scene. Emma regularly teaches and conducts workshops all over the world.

Simon Alexandre (fiddle, nyckelharpa, vocals) is a member of the Orchestre symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and plays regularly with the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, Ensemble Galileo, the Orchestre symphonique de Sherbrooke, and folk ensemble, Andrew Wells-Oberegger.

Amanda Keesmaat (cello, vocals) Principal cellist of Arion Baroque orchestra and Space Time Continuo, Amanda Keesmaat, has also performed with Les Charbonniers de L’Enfer, OktoEcho, Jean-François Bélanger and Projet ClaireObscur.

Seán Dagher (cittern/bouzouki, banjo & vocals) is the artistic director of La Nef and an active performer, arranger, and composer of music from various folk and classical music traditions. He won the OPUS “Creation of the Year” award in 2014 for Sea Songs and has been nominated for numerous Adisq awards. He is renowned for his sea shanties with Ubisoft video games, Assassin’s Creed and Black Flag. He is also host of the popular YouTube Series, Shanty of the Week, and has toured Europe, Ireland, Canada, and the US with UK group, The Longest Johns.

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.