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Svall Harps is "the other half" of Svall Duo, kindof. It's composed of the talented Sara Buffler on harp and vocals with myself on nyckelharpa and fiddle. We play quite a big deal of scandinavian tunes but also balfolk things and some of our own compositions. We got to play out première at the amazing festival Balfolk Dansstage in Enschede in the Netherlands, 1st to 3rd of march 2019. We will be playing at the open ball on saturday evening and also teach three scandinavian dances workshops, yes, three : polska, halling, slängpolska & springar. Sounds promising, hm ? Check all infos there and come to Dansstage to learn a lot about dancing and to hear us for the first time on stage ! 
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One week ago in Prague, my duo Knep played, as announced, its very last balfolk gig. The festival (Prague Balfolk Immersion) was a blast, the organizing team was incredibly friendly, the other bands were just an amazing selection of super talented and interesting people, and the audience was so loving and enthusiastic I got some tears on stage.  An enormous thank you to all the people who have supported Knep during all its life, it has been a crazy and very demanding project but no regrets, everything was worth it, thank you to all the organizers who have booked us across Europe, thank you to the crazy audiences, thank you to all the friends helping us : Kris & Tim & Jolanda of Knupia of course, my family, Elke, roadie-Robin, Lucas, Lucas, Helena, Elena, Ansgar, Lars, Mikulas, Delphine, Beat, all the beloved Dutchies, the friendly Germans, the cute Swiss, the amazing Czech, the beautiful Swedes, the great Belgians, and all the ones I can't name but hold dear in my heart. And last but not least thank you Pascal for having been my partner-in-crime with this crazy, silly, half-swedish octopus-themed project, thanks for your music, your energy, your ideas and all we shared. Knep has been the start of my musical life and I will never forget it ! And now... what ?  Well, I'm currently putting a lot of energy into my new project Svall, with its two "branches" Svall Harps and Svall Duo. My project Skoga Obscura is currently on a break, I will talk more about that soon.
I am also teaching quite a lot, to very enthusiastic students on fiddle and nyckelharpa, it's a bliss to have them. Teaching also includes in a way the monthly scandi jam sessions I organize in Switzerland, and this will go on until I move out. I am also going on with the Scandi Folk Nerd videos and I have the 2019 resolution of putting more energy into my Patreon page, to really make it develop and thrive and be super interesting for the scandinavian music nerds out there. I am also processing lots of ideas about my solo playing, mostly for balfolks but also concerts, I hope to be able to get some stuff started soon and thus have something substantial to tell you ! But we'll see, nothing is certain on this point and I have a lot going on in my non-musical life aswell at the moment. Stay tuned, including the resonance strings ! Here are some numbers : - 4.5 years - 5 countries, soon 6 - around 973.86 friends (estimation) - 2 albums - several dozens of workshops - 214 cm of hair combined (roughly) - 8 instruments (13 counting the vegetables) - 1 regular stage octopus These summarize the history of Knep. A history that is sadly coming to an end. This duo has been through crazy challenges, such as living at 2000 km of distance and loosing Gertrude quite many times. It was all worth it ! Your support, your smiles, your crazing hallings and simply your dancing to our music has made every balfolk and concert worth the travels, rehearsals, organization and hours of arguing on who should get to play the intro. However, today Pascal and Emelie are taking different paths in life and we both feel that we won't be able to go on with Knep. Our two last gigs are going to be great ones : - SILVESTER FOLK in Leipzig during New Year's Eve (infos) - PRAGUE BALFOLK IMMERSION, 25 to 27 january 2019 (infos) So if you want to see Knep live a last time, come to one (or both) of these events and dance your mind off ! Yours, with carrots, animals and crazy hair, /Emelie, Pascal & Gertrude AKA Knep 
So here comes my video "Huldra" :
The tune is : sen polska (slow polska) efter Göran Lång från Haverö, Medelpad, Sweden.
Thousand thanks to Caro Fährmann for the recording and Olga for covering me in dried leaves and taking all the pictures.  These days I'm working on a coming videoclip ! The tune was recorded quite a while ago already but the work on the visual part was finished just last week. It's a serie of pictures which will be arranged as a stop-motion little story about a huldra, a creature from the scandinavian folklore.For the costume, I was strongly inspired by the beltestakk, the folk costume of Øst-Telemark region in Norway, but mixed with other elements as I imagined a huldra would pick clothes a bit everywhere in an attempt to try looking like a normal human being. So here's a little teaser picture for the video, probably online later this week - if everything goes well.
(Oh and yes, I do look extremely pale on the pic, don't get worried about my health, it's only very white makeup !)  EN - Some months ago, I opened my Patreon page in the hope to support myself a bit, especially about my Scandi Folk Nerd videos, which are taking me a lot of time and effort to make and seem to help a bunch of people to play and understand scandinavian folk music. So if you like these videos and/or my music in general, you can help me on Patreon, there are different options of pledging with counterparts, such as sheet music (with bowings) for the tunes I teach in videos and exclusive recordings ! Even if you can't/don't want to pledge, you can show your support by following the Page anyways and interacting with my posts there. SE - För några månader sen har jag öppnat min Patreon sida. Den finns mäst för att understödja mina Scandi Folk Nerd videoer, som tar massa tid och energi att göra ! Så om du tycker om dessa videoer och/eller min musik, du kan hjälpa till på Patreon. Det finns några olika möjligheter, med olika belöningar, till exempel noter (med stråkmönster) till låtarna jag lärar ut i mina videoer och exklusiva inspelningar. Tack så mycket för hjälpen ! FR - Cela fait déjà quelques mois que j'ai ouvert ma page Patreon afin de soutenir ma musique et notamment mes vidéos Scandi Folk Nerd. Ces vidéos me demandent beaucoup de temps et d'énergie mais semblent aider pas mal de gens à comprendre et jouer la musique scandinave. Si vous souhaitez soutenir ces vidéos et/ou ma musique en général, vous pouvez ainsi le faire via Patreon, avec diverses contreparties, par exemple les partitions (avec coups d'archet) des morceaux que j'enseigne en vidéo ou des enregistrements exclusifs. Toute aide est une grande aide et me permet de continuer ma musique et mon enseignement de celle-ci. Merci infiniment !
You might have noticed there's a new page to this website ! It's a list of builders, courses and teachers for nyckelharpa. It will expand with time. Please send me all infos you could have on builders/courses still missing on the list, or details about how instruments by a specific builder sound like. Thanks a lot ! http://waldken.weebly.com/nyckelharpa.html   Just some hints of news in this end of summer : I went to the Nordic Fiddler's Bloc Camp in Røros (Norway) and it was amazing, with many other crazy fiddlers jamming for hours and hours in every corner. I am developping Skoga Obscura again, in a quite new direction, I will soon talk much more about it. And today I drew some bows, so here they are !
 How come I haven't talked about that yet ?!? This has been one of the big events of this 2018 spring : I have started joining the band 'Madina das Spielweyb'. Basically Madina has now two nyckelharpa players to hire (the other one being my good friend Elena, which is also part of Skoga Obscura !), which gives both of us some less stress in our agendas. It's a really nice project, with Madina's well-written songs and her equisite voice, the amazing Karen on harp, a good degree of percussions (here Christophe Zürcher on bodhrán) and a nyckelharpa. A full new repertoire for me, for which I had to rehearse quite a lot, but it's definitely worth it ! We played at MPS Bad Säckingen last april (realizing my dream of playing at an MPS) and... I will join Madina again for no less than the Greenfield Festival in Interlaken in june ! Yay !!  Hej folkies, it seems I'm awfully bad at keeping this blogpage updated. I'll try to do it better the coming months ! Especially as there are many many exciting things coming and actually a great one happened two weeks ago :
My duo Knep released its second album !! It's a mini, with 4 tunes for a total of 17'53''. It's called 'Hallingrr' and as the name suggests... it's containing only halling music ! As usual with Knep, it's a mix of traditional tunes and modern compositions, and we added lots of silly things in it, as for example playing percussion with leek and pumpkins. We also released the goats. You'll understand when you'll listen to it. We basically had a lot of fun with many instruments and crazy ideas and I have to say I'm quite fond of the result - especially as halling music is one of my absolute favourite repertoires. The album can be ordered via Knep's page or just by writing to me (on this website or on FB or any other possible way).
More exciting news to come very, very soon ! |
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