Frigg

^{Listenable and moving}

You won’t hear any songs from this ensemble.

However, it is their violins that sing instead - and sing they will! We think it’s one of the best Scandinavian violin ensembles. They are the only exception in this year of the Festival focusing on singing that proves to be a perfect supplement to the rule.

Finnish-Norwegian Frigg is a versatile group of seven who represent fresh traditional Scandinavian violin music. Their style is a mixture of Kaustinen in Finland and Nord-Trondelag in Norway that is further spiced up by Latin American and Irish folk music.

Kaustinen, a cluster of villages on the slow-winding River Perho in the western Finnish region of Ostrobothnia, has long been famous for its fiddlers. It is largely a result of the innovative influence and success of Kaustinen band JPP (the acronym derives from “Järvelän Pikkupelimannit”) and the teaching by that band’s Mauno Järvelä of all the kids in the area who want to learn over the past few years.

The band Frigg is at the crest of this new wave, full of fresh ideas and taking the next leap forward for Finnish fiddle music.

In Ostrobothnia it’s common for a surname to be the same as the family’s address; the Järveläs come from the village of Järvelä, the scatter of farmhouses a bow-throw up river from Kaustinen. In Frigg are three members of the family’s fourth generation of famous fiddlers: Mauno’s daughter Alina, son Esko and nephew Antti. Their grandfather Johannes Järvelä and great-grandfather Antti Järvelä were both legendary master players.

You won’t find the family names of the four other band members on the gravestones outside Kaustinen’s big yellow and white wooden church, though. Two are from other parts of Finland, and the name Frigg (the Norse goddess of love and fertility) reflects the fact that in this band Finnish fiddling meets Norwegian. Playing both ordinary and Hardanger fiddle are brothers Gjermund and Einar Olav Larsen, from Verdal in the central Norwegian region of Trøndelag. They have played as a duo since childhood, three times winning the group category at Norway’s national traditional music competition, the Landskappleik, in which in 2002 at the age of twenty-one Gjermund became the youngest ever winner of the solo fiddle category; he won it again in 2005.

Members

Gjermund Larsen – violin, hardanger fiddle
Einar Olav Larsen – violin, hardanger fiddle
Alina Järvelä – violin
Esko Järvelä – violin, viola, nyckelharpa, harmonium
Petri Prauda – citter, mandolin, bagpipes
Tuomas Logrén – guitar, resonating guitar (dobro)
Antti Järvelä – double bass, violin

Perform

Päev	Kell	Koht	Hind
Thursday	22:00	Kirsimägi	120EEK
Saturday	23:00	Kultrahoov	160EEK