Spring in Scandinavia, Original Artwork by Corrie Frank

ASTER Women’s Chamber Choir is delighted to be presenting a program of pieces which celebrate the return of Spring in Scandinavia. Many of the pieces we will sing are choral arrangements of folk songs. Folk songs, folk dances and folk arts and crafts offer people an insight into the distinctive ‘personalities’ of the countries where they originated. Percy Scholes said in his article on Folk Song in The Oxford Companion to Music that folks songs are “….seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past ….” Most traditional folk songs are very old and have been passed down from one generation to another by oral tradition. They were sung by the plain folk. People who are of Scandinavian ancestry will want to make a special effort to attend this concert to hear the music that their great-grandparents might have heard or sung.

In order to learn these pieces, ASTER is collaborating with guest artist Dr. Riikka Pietaläinen-Caffrey on our “Springtime in Scandinavia” concerts. Riikka is from Finland and has made arrangements of several Finnish folk songs for the choir to perform. She is an amazing and enthusiastic diction coach, which is very good, because most people in the choir do not speak Swedish, Finnish or Norwegian!

In addition to the folk music, you will hear pieces by Sibelius, Grieg, Anders Edenroth (from the contemporary Swedish a cappella group The Real Group) AND a set of pieces composed for the choir by Broomfield resident Alex Craig called “Astersongs” and an original composition by Dr. Riikka Pietaläinen-Caffrey based on a poem written by her grandmother.