28th Festival Sounds of the North in Gdansk

Gdańsk, Poland – Festival Sounds of the North is an annual international event
that presents traditional folk music culture of nations inhabiting the Northern
Hemisphere. The festival takes place every summer during the Dominican Fair.
This year’s festival runs August 3 – August 5.

This year the Festival is focused on Scandinavian folk music. It was Sweden that 30 years ago introduced the program of reviving its traditional music. Bringing back forgotten customs and traditions, at the time when rock music reigned supreme, may have seemed a very risky undertaking. However, soon in the whole Scandinavia thousands of young people started to play the instruments, sing and dance like their peasant ancestors, with the difference that they adjusted old patterns to the requirements of modern mass culture.

Among the stars of this year’s edition of the Festival there will be Groupa, pioneers of the Swedish folk scene and winners of two Grammy awards. The band plays its own type of contemporary Swedish folk, deeply rooted in the tradition but at the same time using contemporary instrumentation and improvisation.

Folk band Zar will represent Denmark. Both their CDs won Danish Music Awards, the most recognized award of the music scene in Denmark. Especially impressive is the voice of their vocalist Sine Lauritsen, whom critics hailed as a Danish Norah Jones.

Malbrook comes from Germany. It emphasizes that their artistic work has been inspired by ages-long cultural links between northern Germany and Scandinavia.

Besides the Scandinavian musicians, among the participants of this year’s Sounds of the North Festival there will be also Polish bands, which draw on native musical traditions as well as on those of other cultures.

The festival will be opened by the concert of renowned band Carrantuohill. They play traditional Celtic music of Ireland and Scotland. Although, they base their varied repertoire on “Celtic roots”, they add to them their own music arrangements.

Another Polish band playing at the Festival will be KlezmaFour – winners of the Special Award for artistic interpretation at the 9th Polish Radio Contest of Folk Music “New Tradition” in April 2006.

The Festival audience will also see two Tri-City based bands: Chutir and Kashubian Kompanijô Wadzebôków.

Program:

3 August 2006 7p.m., St. John’s Church

* Malbrook (Germany)
* Carrantuohill (Poland)

4 August 2006, 5 p.m., Targ Węglowy

* Kompanijô Wädzebôków (Poland-Kashubia)

4 August 2006, 7 p.m., St. John’s Church

* KlezmaFour (Poland)
* Groupa (Sweden)

5 August 2006, 7p.m., St. John’s Church

* Chutir (Poland)
* Zar (Denmark)