Sofia Karlsson

In the grey and pale Swedish winter season the onslaught of the annual domestic Eurovision Song Contest totally dominates the media and air waves. Meanwhile Sofia Karlsson and her band, on their second consecutive year, continue their seemingly everlasting tour. This time around Gothenburg, in the Southwestern part of Sweden. In churches, libraries, cinemas, restaurants and theatres Karlsson sings her songs to sold out houses every night. A renaissance for a genre, the Swedish visa*, today often dismissed as belonging rather in a museum than on stage? Whatever the reason, the longing for a strong melody, a good story and a fine story teller is beyond doubt. And few deliver like Sofia Karlsson in this sense. With a diction almost uncannily perfect and an unusual attention to the value of the words she has an ability to infuse new life into even the most worn out and often performed material. The unprecedented success of her platinum selling album Svarta ballader (Black ballads) from 2005 with her pioneering interpretations of Swedish poet Dan Andersson is a proof of this as good as any.

Further evidence is to be found on her new album Visor från vinden (Songs from the loft) with its collection of classical songs culled from the vinyl albums of her formative years and grandma's loft; Evert Taube's Balladen om briggen ”Blue Bird” av Hull, Carl Michael Bellman's Märk hur vår skugga, Alf Hambe's Näckaspel, Fred Åkerström and Finn Kalvik's Två tungor and Boris Vian and Hal Berg's Le Deserteur in Lars Forsell's Swedish variant, Jag står här på ett torg, appear as absolutely timeless in Sofia's interpretations.

Alongside these classics more contemporary material as Peps Persson's Spelar för livet and Mikael Wiehe's Flickan och kråkan with guest appearance by Sara Isaksson, is found.

Visor från vinden starts off and ends with Dan Andersson and his translations of Charles Baudelaire's Le Vin des Amants and Moesta e terrabunda from Les Fleurs du Mal set to music by Sofie Livebrant. In between we also hear Anderssons's Hemlängtan and Milrök.

Yet another Sofie Livebrant original, with music set to a poem by seamstress Marianne Flodin about a breakfast break on a summer's day in a small textile plant in the Swedish 50s and a magic a capella rendition of the traditional song Resan till Österlandet performed by a stellar trio comprising Sofia, Lena Willemark and Sara Isaksson are also highlights of the album. An adaption of a Norwegian trad text set to new music by Sofia and an instrumental track by string virtuoso Esbjörn Hazelius complete the tracklist.

Since her public breakthrough with Svarta ballader (Black ballads) Sofia Karlsson has established herself as one of Sweden's major artists regardless of genre. Svarta ballader was met with unanimous praise by the critics and was rewarded with a Swedish as well as a Danish Grammy.

The album was in the charts for more than a year and has to date sold 60.000 copies.

On Visor från vinden Sofia Karlsson is accompanied by her fantastic live band with string virtuosos Esbjörn Hazelius, Roger Tallroth and master

bass- and percussionist Olle Linder. A couple of well chosen guests also appears among them Sara Isaksson, Lena Willemark, Nils Berg and Sofie Livebrant.

Sofia Karlsson – Vocalist from Stockholm. Musical influences: First grandma playing chorals on the pump organ, grandad playing the single row accordion and mother who always sang in the car, later Fred Åkerström, Dolly Parton, Tracy Chapman, Dansar Edward, Kirsten Bråten-Berg and Lena Willemark.

Educated at the Folk music dept. of the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Between 1998-2002 full time member in Swedish folk music act Groupa. Released her debut solo album Folk songs (Amigo, AMCD 748), in 2002. Her hugely successful second solo album Black Ballads – Sofia Karlsson sings Dan Andersson (Amigo, AMCD 756) was released in 2005.

*VISA - The words chanson, lied, visa all mean the same thing in their respective language, i.e. song, and yet each of them has a meaning that distinguishes them from songs in general.

In Scandinavia, the word "visa" usually refers to a text of literary quality joined by stanzas and matched with a melody repeated with the stanzas. The typical visa is of “small size”. In recent years, yet another criterion has come along, namely that it should be “interpretable”.

The history of this literary genre dates far back to courts and courtly habits, to Minne singers, trouvères and vagabond troubadours, and on the way up to our time we meet Villon and Lucidor, Bellman and Taube, Cornelis Vreeswijk and Mikael Wiehe and the whole motley crowd that goes under the name "Visans Vänner", i.e. Friends of Song. Åke Grandell: Har du visor min vän?

The Finnish-Swedish songs (text originally published in Finnish Music Quarterly 2/2002)

Discography:

Visor Från Vinden AMCD 759 2007

Buy it HERE! or at

Spelar För Livet (Cd Single)

Buy it HERE! or at

Svarta Ballader AMCD 756 2005

Folk songs AMCD 748 2002

Folk songs AMCD 187 2002 (CD singel)

Jul i folkton AMCD 758 2005

DIV artister DUBBELTRUBBEL EMI 2005

DIV. artister File Under Folkmusic Sweden AMCD 753 2003

GROUPA Fjalar MNW 2002

GROUPA Lavalek MNW 1998

ETER Eter DRONE 1998

Spelar För Livet - Live Tv4 Nyhetsmorgon 2007-04-07

Frukostrast På En Liten Syfabrik På Landet - Live Tv4 Nyhetsmorgon 2007-04-07