#hardanger fiddle

[savagewilderness]

You're gonna leave me?

[little-miss-rasputin-pageant]

i may be slightly biased but i truly believe there's no instrument that compares to the hardanger fiddle when it comes to evoking the most haunting little folksy feelings known to man

[yanderelesbian]

Check out the new recording that I'm playing on!!!:) it's out may 16th but you can hear the final suite here as a preview

[dustedmagazine]

Mike Gangloff — April Is Passing (VHF)

For Mike Gangloff, music is a communal affair. He tends to make it with other people — in bands such as Pelt, Eight Point Star, Universal Light, and Black Twig Pickers, or in duos with C. Joynes, Steve Gunn and Cara Gangloff. April Is Passing is, like its predecessor Evening Measures, a solo record made by three people. Gangloff plays Hardanger fiddle throughout, accompanied by his spouse Cara on sruiti box and Kailey Schenker, his bandmate in Universal Light, on cello. 

That communal quality extends to the music’s effect. The sounds that issue from his bowing are a vehicle for connection not just with other people, but one’s own psyche and the ineffable. You could say that he covers inner, outer and social space in the course of laying out a unique stylistic zone of his own. This is evident from the first notes of “September Air,” the album’s opening track. His bowed lines arc up and out from a foundational squeezebox drone like a call to order, which is answered by Schenker’s solemn response. It’s as bracing as that first cool night in the Virginia mountains, which leads us to the next track. The unaccompanied “Ironto Dancer” namechecks the town where Gangloff lives, but there’s as much Scandinavian and Hindustani information in its stately opening as there is Appalachian in its unmetered introduction. Once Gangloff gets into gear, his irregular but insistent rhythm  evokes a dance for one, maybe under a full moon. The first side closes with the title tune, another trio performance. Once more, one gets the sense of the Hardanger fiddle’s quickstepping, higher pitches existing at a remove from the other instruments, as though the strings are liting a song from the mountain’s top down into the valley. 

The second side consists of just two performances, one solo and the other trio. “A Fallen Palace Of Snowville” is once again hard to pin down geographically, but easy to sink into sonically, since its patient cadence and yearning melody showcase the Hardanger fiddle’s resonant aura. The patiently winding “Helen’s Song” feels like a paean to good company, particularly due to Schenker’s shifts between keening witness and stolid support. April may pass, but the way this music synthesizes antique traditions feels like it is built to last. 

Bill Meyer

[superduperfunfacts]

SUPER DUPER FUN FACT

The theme of Edvard Grieg's "Morning Mood" from Peer Gynt is built from the tuning pitches of the Hardanger fiddle, a Norwegian folk instrument that influenced other works by Grieg

[robosapiens]

[lightneverfades]

HOLY SHIT GUYS WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE MUSIC IN EPISODE TWO of LOKI!?!

It was so FUCKING AMAZING! 

HOLY SHIT THESE ARE THE GANGS THAT MADE IT HAPPEN YA’LL

Kudos to Natalie Holt, Olav Mjelva, Erik Rydvall and Charlie Draper (the artists that I know of that play the instruments in the show, let me know if I’ve missed anyone!) Thank you for mind-blowing my brain!!!!

CHECK EM OUT!!!!!!!

[vintagenorway]

Actor and musician Alfred Maurstad, 1930s. 

From the back of the photo: “To Aase, who has always been just wonderful and lovely from the fiddler Alfred.”