LIVE ENTERTAINMENT
Revel in the eclectic mix of entertainment, featuring traditional dances and lively music that capture the spirit of Nordic culture across the Pacific Northwest. Friday evening sets the stage for music and dancing near a blazing bonfire, while Saturday showcases the traditional Midsummer pole raising.
FRIDAY SCHEDULE
5 PM
Doors
5:00 PM
Liam Barnes duo
7:00 PM
Dan Schlesinger euphonium+
8:00 PM
Joseph Linahon ballads
9 PM
End
SATURDAY SCHEDULE
10 AM
Doors
10 AM
Renvontuli
11 AM
Vasa Rosebuds youth group dancers
11 AM
Games in kids area
12 PM
Portland Nordic Chorus
1 PM
Midsummer Pole Ceremony with Vasa Rosebuds and Fossegrimen
2 PM
Fossegrimen
2:30 PM
Tug of War and games in kids area
3 PM
Dan Schlesinger euphonium+
4 PM
Granstrom, Rogers and Admunnd
5 PM
End
Vasa Youth Group
Currently under the direction of Christine Smith. Vasa Rosebuds have routinely performed and led majstång dancing at Midsummer celebrations in Portland and Astoria. Within the past 5 years, they’ve traveled internationally to dance and participate in Midsummer celebrations in Sweden and Canada. In December they were featured at Nordic Northwest's ScanFair in Portland with a dance performance and a Lucia pageant. Additionally, they have performed many times at the Junction City Scandinavian Festival, participated yearly in the Junior Rose Festival Parade, and danced at many other local multicultural celebrations. They also performed at the Grand Opening of IKEA in Portland.
Portland Nordic Chorus
Portland Nodic Chorus is a mixed community chorus celebrating their friendship and common interest in Nordic Culture and Music by rehearsing and performing music with a Scandinavian connection. They sing primarily in Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and English.
Dan Schlesinger
A contemporary approach to the traditional music, Dan will be performing Scandinavian folk tunes on euphonium with accompaniment. He plays a variety of styles of music, including jazz and classical, on euphonium & trombone. When the onset of the pandemic prevented musicians from performing alongside one another, Dan developed a "one man band" approach where he performs live as a single solo brass musician accompanied by backing tracks that creates a sound like an ensemble of instruments.
Fossegrimen
Fossegrimen, the Eugene-based 5-member folk dance group, is named for a Scandinavian waterfall-dwelling folk creature that teaches people how to play the fiddle. The band plays a variety of Nordic traditional melodies, folk tunes which have been transmitted through the years from musician to musician. Fossegrimen plays both gammaldans (literally 19th-century Nordic “old dances" such as vals, schottis/reinlender, masurka and polkas) and bygdedans (Norwegian village dances such as springars, gangars, polskar, and polsdans) as well as set dances and mixers known as runddansere or turdans.
While most of the songs on Fossegrimen’s album "Vals til Claire" (2008) are from the 1700s and 1800s, the title track is an original written by David for Claire Elliker-Vågsberg. Fossegrimen provides the music for Scandinavian folk dances, weddings, festivals, and fairs. The group, which includes leaders David and Claire Elliker-Vågsberg; their son, Kurt Elliker (fiddle), Brian Wood (guitar and nyckelharpa), and Carson Krause (bass), wear bunader (traditional Norwegian folk outfits) for special occasions. David Elliker-Vågsberg studied violin and also learned to play the hardanger fiddle while he was in college. He also performs on fiddle and the nyckelharpa, as does Claire Elliker-Vågsberg. The hardanger fiddle, which originated in 16th-century Norway, has four top strings and four to five sympathetic strings and is tuned higher than a violin. The nyckelharpa, literally a “key harp” of 14th-century Swedish ancestry, is a bowed string instrument. It has 4 top strings played with a bow, 12 sympathetic strings, and a set of horizontal “keys” on the neck that the player depresses to fret the strings and change the notes. In 2003, Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Oregon Arts Beat" featured Fossegrimen on a program. Claire and David have traveled to Norway since 2015 to compete in a National contest known as Landsfestivalen i gammaldansmusikk as members of a fiddle group called Naustedalen Spelemannslag. The Landsfestivalen is a festival for which as many as 500 fiddlers and dancers of all ages compete.
Granstrom, Rogers and Admund
Granstrom, Rogers & Admund is a trio consisting of Jimmy Granstrom, Brent Rogers and Gunilla Admund. Jimmy is a songwriter who has had his songs played on the radio in more than a dozen countries on five continents. Together with Thomas Karlsson, he forms the songwriting duo Project Earthbridge (www.projectearthbridge.com), which have had their songs “Alicia” and “Made Of Stars” in rotation on the major Swedish regional radio station P4 Sörmland. Their most recent single "Allt jag ville säga (Everything I Wanted To Say)" was released on June 1 and features vocals by Peter Mörlin, whose acting credits include a major role in the HBO series Beartown, based on the novel by Fredrik Backman. Jimmy also co-wrote the song "Only Summer", which was played on the SiriusXM The Spectrum show "Nordic Rox" co-hosted by the legendary singer/songwriter Per Gessle of Roxette (Sweden's second best-selling music act after ABBA) in September 2024. Brent is a professional musician, producer, audio engineer and songwriter who has worked with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and recorded and released songs with the likes of Tim Gorman of “The Who” (www.brentrogers.com). Gunilla has previously performed with Jimmy and Brent at Midsummer and ScanFair in 2018, 2019 and 2024. At this year’s Midsummer celebration, Jimmy will again provide spoken introductions and lyrical excerpts while Brent and Gunilla will sing a variety of original songs with music by Jimmy and/or Brent, as well as Jimmy's English version of a Swedish pop classic and Swedish lyrics ("Midsommar på Fogelbo") written to the melody of Dobie Gray's "Drift Away".