Biography

Andrea Hoag is a passionate and lyrical fiddle player whose free flights of imagination are firmly grounded in many years of traditional playing. Andrea is one of the most-respected North American players of Swedish music, performing at venues from the Kennedy Center to Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival. She has been featured on NPR's Performance Today and has presented Swedish music across the U.S., and in Canada, England, and Sweden. The Swedish music magazine Spelmannen called Andrea's 1993 album with Bruce Sagan, Spelstundarna, "deeply rooted in the Swedish soul".

As performer and teacher in several diverse fiddle traditions, Andrea has been guest faculty at Berklee College of Music, the Universities of New Mexico and Washington, Fiddle & Dance at Ashokan, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, WA, the Augusta Heritage Center, John C. Campbell Folk School, Country Dance and Song Society at Pinewoods and Buffalo Gap, and many other courses and festivals. She is a permanent faculty member at Multicultural Folk Arts' Center's annual Scandinavian Week. A versatile and imaginative dance musician, Andrea has played for American contra and square dancing, English country dancing, Scandinavian, swing and vintage couple dancing for over 20 years.

Andrea performs regularly with the eclectic quartet Cabaret Sauvignon, with mandolinist/guitarist Tom Espinola, with Hardangar fiddle player Loretta Kelley, with Celtic trio Emerald Glen, and as a soloist. She has been a guest performer with the early music groups Ensemble Galilei and La Rondinella, with the award-winning Cajun band Squeeze Bayou, and with hammered dulcimer player Maggie Sansone. Her range and depth make her a popular accompanist for events from English Playford balls to The Christmas Revels. In recent years, Andrea has returned with renewed passion to her love of Southern traditions, avidly pursuing West Virginia fiddle styles, old-time Cajun fiddling, and blues.

Born in Seattle in 1956, Andrea moved to the Southern Appalachians in her early twenties. She attended Warren Wilson College's Appalachian Music program, where she was influenced by David Holt and Quay Smathers. She went to Berea, Kentucky, for a summer-intensive Appalachian Studies program at Berea College, and stayed on to work for the Council of the Southern Mountains Appalachian Bookstore. She managed the music department and worked on an NEH-sponsored Mobile Bookstore project, visiting and hosting cultural events around the Appalachian region. During these years, Andrea studied with a number of elder musicians, including Lily Mae Ledford, J.P. Fraley, Darly Fulks, and Wilson Douglas. She pored over tapes and manuscripts in the Berea College Appalachian Music archives. She also began playing for traditional American and English dancing.

In 1980, Andrea moved to Petersburg, Alaska, a town built by Norwegian immigrants. Here she pursued her interest in Scandinavian music, played in the country rock band King Crab Over Tokyo, and hooked up with Irish and jazz musicians. As operations manager for public radio station KFSK, Andrea spent many hours a day with folk music and jazz. She toured Denmark as musician for an American dance troupe, and spent several months in Scotland and Ireland pursuing traditional music.

A growing love for the intricacies and tonalities of Swedish music led Andrea to Sweden in 1983. She became fluent in Swedish and graduated from a course in Folk Violin Pedagogy at Malungs Folkhögskola, where she studied with Jonny Soling and Kalle Almlöf. She specialized in the complex music from the villages of Bingsjö and Orsa in Dalarna, and studied intensively with elder fiddle masters Päkkos Gustaf and Nils Agenmark, and also with Leif Göras and Ole Hjorth.

Returning to Seattle, Andrea became a leader of Scandinavian music in North America, performing and teaching from coast to coast and in England. She was director of the Seattle Skandia Spelmanslag for seven years, and led the group on an acclaimed performing tour to Sweden. Andrea was a long-time member of the Swedish trio Norrsken (which was selected by the Washington Arts Council for its Centennial Performance Tour, and once had a chicken dish named in its honor!) and with Three Way Street, a trio which performed folk songs, instrumentals, and swing tunes around the Pacific Northwest. With Three Way Street, Crow's Feet, and other ensembles, Andrea played for contra dances up and down the West Coast, playing on several occasions with legendary pianist Bob McQuillen.

Performance tours on the East Coast led to a move from Washington State to Washington D.C. in 1992. Since then, Andrea has kept a busy touring schedule and a lively teaching practice. In the past few years, she has been actively pursuing creative writing, earning her B.A. degree in 1998, and is integrating more spoken word into her performances.

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Azalea City Recordings