Gro Marie Svidal - Norway

Album release concert

Gro Marie Svidal is one of Norway's leading Hardanger fiddle players. With the tradition from Sunnfjord as a starting point, she has created a versatile and creative career that ranges from traditional solo playing, international collaboration projects, theater and dance productions and other genre-crossing projects. She is one of three women who have won the prestigious A-class at the National Competition on the Hardanger fiddle, and is also the first on the Hardanger fiddle to complete a doctorate in artistic development work.   

Tryllespel is a solo project created to investigate the playing space in tradition and the instrument. Using improvisation as a method, Svidal investigates improvisation outside of the playing of the melody, and spins on musical language and components that have settled as memory in her own body. The starting point is the musical, improvised prelude that fiddle players have long resorted to when the instrument was to be tuned, when a special mood was to be established, or when imagination and technical brilliance were to be unleashed. The title of the project, Tryllespel, is taken from Jølster in Sunnfjord, and refers to the prelude's ability to enchant the listener.  

Tryllespel is Gro Marie Svidal's third solo album, and will be released on the record label Melovitten. Svidal's first album, Hardingfele , was released in 2009, and Eilov in 2016.