The Swedish fiddler Lena Jonsson has created a unique style inspired by traditional Swedish music as well as many other influences. Today we’re focusing on the wonderful 3rd album by her trio, “Folk Covers” which celebrates many great folk music composers of today. I think you’ll really enjoy this uplifting conversation which features a lot of music, including Lena giving us some spontaneous house concert experiences, and clips from the new album, with insights into process of curating and interpreting these folk covers; please note the timestamps have the tune names. You’ll also learn about the Swedish folk scene and regional differences, her experiences studying both in Sweden and Boston at Berklee, her love of creative design and how to dance a Polska.

Darol Anger is an acoustic music legend known as much for his innovative fiddle style beyond  Bluegrass and Jazz traditions, and his teaching. Darol has helped drive the evolution of the contemporary string band through his involvement with numerous pathbreaking ensembles such as the Turtle Island String Quartet, the David Grisman Quintet, and his current touring group Mr Sun. This podcast episode is being released a few days before his new 2-album set Diary of a Fiddler #2: The Empty Nest, and you’ll be hearing many clips from this brilliant collaborative project that features dozens of phenomenal string players and improvisers. You’ll find the titles and performers from these clips in the timestamps, and please go over to Bandcamp and buy this album, which you’ll also find linked in the show notes. 

You’ll find some related episodes of this podcast linked for you, with some of the many wonderful musicians we talked about in this wide-ranging episode.

Anyone interested in the history of American acoustic music will be curious to hear Darol’s stories from his long career, and his advice to students from his many years teaching at Berklee and online at Artistworks. Most importantly I’m sure you’ll be inspired by Darol’s openness and generosity to musical connection. This interview is linked here in podcast and video formats as well as the transcript.