Header

Penn State College of Arts and Architecture
Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State

Event Slides Per Node 1415

  • Three men smile and look down.
  • Three musicians—playing accordion, violin and cittern—perform on a stage while surrounded by stage fog.

Dreamersʼ Circus

7:30 pm Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Last season, a Schwab Auditorium crowd responded enthusiastically to the Danish String Quartet’s performance of classical music. But audience members got especially excited when violinist Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen led the foursome in arrangements of half a dozen Nordic folk tunes. Sørensen returns to Schwab this season with Dreamers’ Circus, a trio that draws inspiration from the traditions of Nordic folk songs and reshapes them into something bright, shiny, and new.

In 2009, Sørensen and Ale Carr, who plays the Nordic cittern, were in a Copenhagen, Denmark, pub jamming together on some folk tunes. In came Nikolaj Busk, who sat down at the piano and began playing along. The three wound up performing together all night, and Dreamers’ Circus was born.

The musicians display inventiveness in their approach to music from Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland plus the far reaches of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The ensemble, which makes its North American debut on this tour, has won five Danish Folk Music Awards and has toured across Europe, Japan, and Australia.

The players, two Danes and a Swede, view their roots as a point of departure, not a straightjacket. This adventurous attitude, coupled with outstanding musicianship, has brought the trio to the forefront of the Nordic folk and world music scenes.

“The watchword here is ‘expansive,’” writes a reviewer for RootsWorld, “for the trio crafts remarkably open vistas from humble means.”

Artistic Viewpoints will not be offered before this performance.

ticketmaster.com is a resale marketplace. Ticket prices may be above or below face value.

Adult $38
University Park Student $15
18 and Younger $28

sponsor
Eileen Leibowitz

Artist Websites: