Category Archives: Journal

About

By lydia | Published: November 21, 2014

We spent an intense and rewarding 2012–13 school year in Sweden, studying fiddle and nyckelharpa at the Eric Sahlström Institute. ESI is the epicenter of the nyckelharpa universe; it’s located in Tobo, a couple hours’ drive north of Stockholm. The town is tiny, but is nevertheless a familiar name both to nyckelharpa players around the […]

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Brons!

By lydia | Published: June 11, 2013

Yesterday I played my ~audition for the Zorn Jury, and was awarded my bronze medal, woo hoo! It is kind of weird to try to write about the whole thing in English. You can read some context about the system in this article about the title Riksspelman, which is what I would become later if […]

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Practice makes better

By lydia | Published: March 6, 2013

…as my uncle Edgar says, because nobody is perfect. Our class’s earlier round of practicing playing for dancing was such a success that we did it again. Fifteen-minute solo timeslots, and a lot of really quite good dance music.

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Jeanette & Mats at Stallet

By lydia | Published: March 3, 2013

Jeanette Eriksson and Mats Berglund played an awesome concert-and-dance gig at Stallet. I didn’t make it to the show myself, but Andrea brought me a couple of little movies — and Jeanette said it was OK for me to post them for y’all, yaay! Slängpolska efter Johan Christian Blomgren — one of my favorite tunes […]

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Salty dog rag

By lydia | Published: February 28, 2013

This week’s Tobotorsdag concert featured playing by the Tierps spelmanslag, and sometimes also dancing by Strömbergs folkdansgille. I took a couple of quickie little movies I thought y’all might be interested to see: The salty dog rag — showing its roots as a schottis variant. The tune we know for it was nowhere to be […]

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Umefolk festival report

By lydia | Published: February 25, 2013

OK, so maybe traveling to Helsinki and Tallinn and Umeå all in the same week is not the most restful possible vacation… What a great little festival! Again, as at Linköping last fall, there were so many good concerts I wanted to go to that there wasn’t really any time left over for jamming. Favorites: […]

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