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Loretta Kelley
AmerikaSpel
ACCD 9603
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Loretta
Kelley
Loretta Kelley is America's foremost player of the traditional Hardanger
fiddle (hardingfele), an intricately decorated fiddle native to Norway with
sympathetic strings, a nearly flat bridge and a 300-year unbroken aural
tradition. Loretta
specializes in slått music, dance tunes rooted in the 18th century
with sometimes unique asymmetrical rhythms, modal scales with "floating"
intervals, and haunting tonalities.
Loretta has performed and taught throughout the US for nearly 20 years.
She has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered and Prairie Home Companion.
She has traveled numerous times to Norway to study with master fiddlers,
and has placed highly in competitions in Norway and appeared on Norwegian
radio.
Loretta's album AmerikaSpel (America Playing) reveals European ethnic
music's best-kept secret--the driving rhythms of Norwegian springar and gangar
dance tunes played on solo hardingfele. A few tracks also feature Loretta
joined by associates on hardingfele, accordion, piano and voice. Mike Joyce
in the Washington Post says of Loretta's album "the pieces...often
develop a haunting power...sometimes intimate, sometimes spirited and always
ear-opening."
Dick Rees, who joins Loretta on Urheimen, is a full-time musician specializing
in Scandinavian music on button and piano accordion as well as fiddle, and
was an original member of Garrison Keillor's Powdermilk Biscuit Band.
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Track
6 3:32
Kåfjell (The Kå Mountain) Traditional
Track 15 4:01
Urheimen (Urheim's Tune) Traditional
KÅFJELL (The Kå Mountain)
A gangar dance tune from Telemark, Norway. The gangar is an elegant, improvisational
Norwegian couple dance in a subtle, swinging duple rhythm. This tune is from
the area of Hovin in Telemark, and was a favorite of Olav Flåto, one
of Hovin's best dance fiddlers.
Musician:
Loretta Kelley: hardingfele
URHEIMEN (Urheim's Tune)
A vossarull
dance tune from Voss, Norway. This tune is from the tradition of Oddmund Urheim,
a well-known 19th-century fiddler from the Hardanger region of Western Norway.
Its mood reflects the rolling style of the vossarull, a couple dance whose
hallmark is smooth, graceful turning.
Musicians:
Loretta Kelley: hardingfele
Dick Rees: accordion
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AMERIKASPEL
Loretta Kelley
ACCD 9603
Produced by Charlie Pilzer.
Mastered by Charlie Pilzer and David Glasser, Airshow Mastering,
Springfield,
VA.
Recorded by Heidi Gerber at Bias Studio, Springfield, VA.
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