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Norwegian music, dance program Jan. 5 features Hardanger fiddlers, dancers

mjc
January 3, 2001

NORTHFIELD, Minn. ? A Norwegian music and dance program featuring Hardanger fiddlers and Norwegian dancers will be performed at St. Olaf College on Friday, Jan. 5.

The event, free and open to the public, will be at 7 p.m. in Urness Recital Hall, Christiansen Hall of Music. A reception will follow the performance.

Hardanger fiddlers Olav Hegge, Andrea Een and Karen Torkelson Solgård will be featured, as will dancers Olav and Mary Hegge.

The ensemble will perform favorite old-time Norwegian tunes and music from Vestland, Valdres and Telemark. Members of the audience will be invited to participate in social dancing after the concert and reception.

The program is sponsored by the St. Olaf College Music Department and by the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America. It is made possible by a grant from the Minnesota Legislature, and is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Hegges are champion dancers in the Valdresspringer, and teach the unique dance from Valdres, Norway. They dance regularly with Øystre Slidre spel-og dansarlag in Valdres, which performs for tourists and other groups. They teach classes in the Twin Cities and conduct weekend dance workshops throughout the United States and in Sweden.

Olav Jørgen Hegge grew up in a family of fiddlers, dancers and langeleik players from the Valdres area of Norway. He is a recognized master of the Hardanger fiddle and the area dance style called Valdresspringer. As a young engineering student in Oslo, he studied "hardingfele" (Hardanger fiddle) with Torliev Bolstad, a master fiddler from Valdres, and as a teenager he played the accordion in a popular dance band.

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Mary Sandford Hegge grew up in a Scandinavian-American home in St. Paul, Minn. She has studied Scandinavian dance since the mid-1980s with master dancers in Norway and Sweden, concentrating on the springar dances from Valdes and Telemark. She teaches Scandinavian dance at the American Swedish Institute, at Tapestry Folkdance Center, for community groups and privately. She also studies langeleik with Olav?s cousin, Gunvor Hegge.

Een, a St. Olaf music faculty member, developed mastery of the Hardanger fiddle by studying from the master fiddlers in Norway. At St. Olaf she teaches violin, viola, chamber music and Hardanger fiddle. Since 1980 she has presented more than 100 lecture-recitals in the United States and around the world. She is one of the performers featured in the Minnesota Historical Society recording, "Norwegian-American Music from Minnesota: Old-Time and Traditional Favorites." She also has been featured on Norwegian television in a series about Norwegian traditional music in the Upper Midwest, and has been interviewed on Norwegian radio. She is a founder, former board member and life member of the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America.

Karen Torkelson Solgård grew up on a farm near Crookston, Minn., where her mother and grandmother taught her to sing Norwegian folk songs. As an adult she learned Hardanger fiddle from several masters, including Hegge and Een. She has been vice president of the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America and chairperson of the Twin Cities Hardingfelelag. She performs for dances, gives performance-demonstrations for cultural groups throughout the Midwest, and teaches in schools through Young Audiences of Minnesota.

St. Olaf College prepares students to become responsible citizens of the world, fostering development of mind, body and spirit. A four-year, coeducational liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), St. Olaf has a student enrollment of 2,950 and a full-time faculty of approximately 250. It is one of Money Guide?s top 100 "elite values in college education today," and it leads the nation?s colleges in percentage of students who study abroad.

Contact Michael Cooper at 507-786-3315 or cooperm@stolaf.edu.