Scandinavian festival in Minnesota celebrates its 20th anniversary - with Danish guests

Nisswa-Stämman is a small folk music festival that takes place every year at the beginning of June. It happens in the city Nisswa in the North American state of Minnesota, also called 'The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes'.

I experienced the festival for the first time in 2007 together with the Danish violinist Harald Haugaard. Back then we were the first Danish band to visit the festival, and it was a very special experience. Since then I visited the festival with the trio Gangspil in 2016, and now that they are celebrating their 20th anniversary, I am invited to play there with the trio Jensen, Bugge & Høirup, and the old Danish-American fiddler Dwight Lamb.

When we visit the festival this summer, it will be part of a tour down through the American midwest, with concerts in Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa, something we are really looking forward to.

Dwight Lamb, whose grandfather the fiddler Lean Jerup (Chris Jerup) immigrated from Jutland in 1893, learned an extensive repertoire of old, now forgotten melodies from his maternal grandfather as a youth.

It will be part of the tracks that we play on the tour, and otherwise too records on the same occasion, but at Nisswa-Stämman, we give both a concert with Dwight and a concert as the trio Jensen, Bugge & Høirup.

It's going to be fun, I already know.