folkBALTICA visitors are well aware of this phenomenon: next to Argentina, Finland is the most tango-crazy nation. And it is this passion that fuels the music of the Saimaa trio, with the very expressive, room-filling voice of Finnish singer Anna-Katariina Hollmérus, accompanied by two excellent German musicians.

They met when they were playing with the world famous folk band Värttinä, and soon discovered that as a duo they could create unique worlds of contemporary, acoustic music, which combined a markedly Nordic influence with a strong feeling for the dialog to be found in chamber music.

Multi-instrumentalist Achim Prigge from Rendsburg is a musical handyman. He played all the instruments on his Homework CD of own compositions that are strongly influenced by Nordic folk and jazz. At folkBALTICA he will be performing these new sounds live on stage for the first time and with a new band.

German romanticism in a 21st century lifestyle: Astonishing, surprising, controversial: in their “favourite project”, singer-songwriter Bobo and sound fiddler Sebastian Herzfeld give new life to well-known and unknown German folk songs and poems of the Romantic period. A unique mixture of folk, jazz, pop and experiment!

Yxalag is made up of students from the Lübeck Academy of Music. Their teacher, Prof. Bernd Ruf, well known for his klezmer clarinette playing, has kindled a passion within them for music of the eastern European Jewry.

She is one of the greatest Norwegian folk artists, with Finnish roots on her mother’s side. The second half of the duo is jazz base player Bjørn Kjellemyr. They deal explicitly with the magical rune songs that Finnish immigrants brought to Norway in the 17th century, and the shaman culture of these forest dwellers.

Sweden’s “Folk Band of 2011”: Nordic is a folk music trio and yet not...They create film score-like compositions, musical sound pictures, heavy grooves and exciting improvisations. Fans in Sweden treat this purely acoustic experience like a rock concert.

Unique! He knows how to juggle with words and music better than any other, combining melancholy and lust for life in his own inimitable way. Wenzel’s songs add music to irritatingly beautiful poetry, giving sound to caustic images. He presents world music with razor-sharp German lyrics between polka, chanson, klezmer, rock, performance and classical.

For 35 years the great Low German singer-poet has been singing in a language that he says is “dying out, and nobody is interested – except maybe for use in folk-kitsch, nostalgic anecdotes or pop-junk". He continues to search, find, and invent, images of intense beauty and musicality.

For his “melancholy and light-hearted stories” he has in recent years been awarded the prestigious Stadt Kappeln Low German Literature Prize. This slightly cynical but humorous songwriter and novelist always performs to full houses, which may also have something to do with his popularity as author of the NDR series “Hör mal` n beten to”.

Based on a sound singing education and intensive occupation with the folk music tradition, these four singers create pure a cappella music, which is characterised by a great density of sound and rhythmic variety.

Many colleagues consider and venerate Harald Haugaard to be one of the best folk violinists in the world. With his feel for the right balance between tradition and innovation, virtuosity and simplicity, he is a leading figure and a role model. Helene Blum is the embodiment of authenticity, love of folk songs and natural gracefulness.

Born into a German Jewish family in 1922, Esther Bejarano is one of the last two surviving members of the Girls’ Orchestra of Auschwitz. For several years she has been involved with a moving trans-generational and trans-cultural project with the Cologne-based German-Italian-Turkish hip-hop formation “Microphone Mafia” and her two children.

We owe this year’s festival theme to Zenobia accordionist Mette Katrine Jensen. Having presented regional dance tradition at last year’s folkBALTICA, she has found songs and tunes dating back to the joint German-Danish history in the border country. Zenobia will present beautiful instrumental pieces and some lyrics that also touch on the borderland between life and death.

The poet Klaus Groth elevated Low German lyric poetry to a level unequalled before or after. Since 2004 the Hamburger musician Christoph Scheffler has been working intensively on putting Groth’s lyrics to music. The guitar accompaniment acts an independent voice alongside the vocals.

Unbridled soul and unrestrained dance fervour: They combine their love of Yiddish music with other eastern European cultures, and perform an extremely versatile and varied repertoire of Jewish, Moldavian, Ukranian and Romanian music, deeply rooted and with great virtuosity.

The world’s only folk flute trio gives us the unique opportunity to experience the usually violin-heavy Scandinavian folk musik played on a variety of flutes. When the 7 flutes are unleashed the listener experiences a journey full of variety, past the Danish islands and Swedish forests to the swampland where the devil roams at large.

A musical pearl in the German-Danish focus of the 8th folkBALTICA! 
The story of this programme begins in 1767, as Mette Marie Jacobsen, known as Methea, was born in Faaborg... It was to be almost 230 years later before the music compiled for her wedding was rediscovered in a Copenhagen archive by violinist and Abild front-woman Anna Aagard.

This band is suddenly there, and readily sings everywhere in Low German as though there was no Low German niche. With their honest, hand-made pop and catchy life-based songs, the group tours a lot, busking or playing at garden parties, in clubs and on TV shows – and now at folkBALTICA too. Welcome!

Songwriter Heinz Ratz and his band Strom & Wasser have created a unique musical event: they brought world-class musicians in German refugee camps into the studio, some of whom were very well-known in their native countries yet are not even able to buy instruments here.

Nancy Thym  manages to weave harp playing, songs and stories, in such a fascinating manner that they carry the audience off into an enchanted world. Whether she is telling old Nordic fairytales with music, explaining her many fascinating harps or bringing the world of the “harpies” to life.

Finally a Lithuanian group at folkBALTICA... and what a group! They are an institution: 5,300 performances (250 a year) and the whole range of Lithuanian traditions: dance music, shepherd folklore on old horn instruments, folksongs and polyphonic sutartines, which is sacral-meditational music performed vocally or on simple pan flutes.

The Landstreicher from the Flensburg Music School will be presenting some of their own compositions at the great folkBALTICA closing concert under the leadership of Christiana Voss.

Songwriter Heinz Ratz and his band Strom & Wasser have created a unique musical event: they brought world-class musicians in German refugee camps into the studio, some of whom were very well-known in their native countries yet are not even able to buy instruments here.

Unique! He knows how to juggle with words and music better than any other, combining melancholy and lust for life in his own inimitable way. Wenzel’s songs add music to irritatingly beautiful poetry, giving sound to caustic images. He presents world music with razor-sharp German lyrics between polka, chanson, klezmer, rock, performance and classical.