Category Archives: ESI

I realize I have been remiss in not identifying our cast of characters, but I was thinking I would pull together something super-informative and organized and ask everyone’s permission to post photos and stuff. Wouldn’t that be cool? But meanwhile, here is a simple list. The spelkurs has 11 students: nyckelharpa and fiddle — me, […]

Most of our class went to Linköping for a grand weekend of music festival excesses. I am pleased to report that the Tobo spelmanslag (9 of our 11 course members) played really well! We’ve been rehearsing hard for about three weeks (including most evenings for the last couple of weeks), selecting three tunes we’ve learned […]

Last week Magnus Gustafsson came in as our guest teacher for two days. We spent the first day learning about an instrument classification system created (presumably in German) by Sachs and Hornbostel, learning the Swedish names of lots of obscure folk instruments from around the world, but with emphasis on ones from the Nordic countries. […]

ESI runs a ~twice-monthly concert series, Tobotorsdag (Tobo Thursdays), and this week was the first of the season. Our guest artists were the Silverbasorkestern, whom I had vaguely supposed might all be playing silverbas harpa. But nope: of the six band members, only two are playing harpa — and one of those also plays a […]

Noteworthy this week: Surprise visit from Genticorum on Monday afternoon, which of course entailed their all trying their hands at nyckelharpa. Hasse Gille came in as our guest teacher on Wednesday. His playing manages to be both rough and polished, somehow, and full of joy. Banking report: it turns out we aren’t eligible to open […]