July 27, 2007

Moving Back to Norway!

 

 

 

I just finished teaching and performing at the HFAA's annual workshops at Folklore Village, Wisconsin. It was a blast! My beginning fiddling class and singing classes exceeded all of my expectations and even joined me in playing on the closing concert and for the dance party in the evening. It's so wonderful to be able to share Norwegian traditional folk music with so many people and have them come away from the workshops with new skills that can help them in their own music-making. Although I'm a big fan of making arrangements of traditional tunes and of creating my own music inspired by tradition, the performances of my fellow teachers and the Norwegian master teachers helped me to realize that the purely traditional* music needs no embellishment. If I want to make arrangements for my own purposes, OK - but it's also important to know where the traditional material comes from and to be able to play it well and respectfully. I suppose this is why I have to go back to Norway...

 

 

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July 10, 2007

Fun in the sun

 

 

I've just finished a tour of schools with Sarah Granskou sponsored by the Sons of Norway. It was wonderful! The aim of this particular tour was to promote awareness and enjoyment of Norwegian culture through music, storytelling, dance, and folk art. Over the course of two weeks, we were privileged to give thirty performances at thirteen different schools in Rockford, Blair, La Crosse, and Madison, Wisconsin. The response to our classroom performances and assemblies was met with an overwhelmingly positive response from students and teachers.

 

One of our goals was to reach out to all our audience members and to give them the sense that the beauty of Norway and its culture are readily accessible for anyone who is interested. We wanted to leave the children with the excitement of learning about a culture that, whether it is in their genetic heritage or not, is worth exploring and accessible to them right in their own community.

 

Our hosts from the various Sons of Norway lodges were absolutely fantastic. We could not have asked for more generous hospitality than we received while traveling. The gracious donation of their time and resources and their commitment to helping us reach out to the schools and communities made the tour feasible as well as personally rewarding for us.

 

We feel blessed to have been able to share this time with the local schools and community members of Rockford, Blair, La Crosse, and Madison and are pleased at the amount that we have learned from the people for whom we were performing. For us, it has been rewarding to spread awareness of various cultural aspects and music from all over Norway, as well as to learn songs and stories from the people we meet along the way, thus carrying the Scandinavian-American oral tradition forward. We would like to thank the Sons of Norway Foundation for supporting our efforts in the arts and for helping to make this tour possible.