Leroy
Larson and The Minnesota Scandinavian Ensemble performs an eclectic
and entertaining mix of music, humor and history from Scandinavian and early
immigrant traditions.
LeRoy Larson founded the Ensemble in 1974. He had grown up around Scandinavian music, and had been recording it since the late 1960s. In the course of writing a Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Minnesota, he did extensive fieldwork on Scandinavian music in the Midwest. LeRoy had also assembled a vast collection of old 78RPM records that were a valuable historical record of these musical traditions. In the early days of the Ensemble, these recordings provided much of the group's repertoire. To this day, the Ensemble continues to play the waltzes, polkas and schottisches that form the backbone of the Scandinavian old-time dance music repertoire. The members of the group, all of whom come from Scandinavian or Scandinavian-American families, have their musical roots in traditional dance bands. They play accordion, banjo, mandola, guitar, fiddle, button-box, and a variety of other instruments. Together, they give performances that are entertaining, skillful, and educational.
For over 25 years, the Minnesota Scandinavian Ensemble has performed at festivals, dances, concerts, parties, and on radio and television programs. They continue to do new research, resurrect old music, and record. The Ensemble specializes in music that has emerged from Scandinavian immigrant communities in the Midwest, particularly that of Norwegian-Americans from Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Their programs often include vocal music, instrumental dance tunes, old Scandinavian-American dialect songs, jokes, anecdotes, historical material, and original pieces in traditional styles. They have played on National Public Radio's "A Prairie Home Companion," by invitation at an emigration festival in Norway, and at a concert before King Olav V. In 1989, they received a Minnesota Music Award.
Leroy Larson grew up in a rather isolated Scandinavian community in northern Minnesota, and was influenced by musical parents, relatives and neighbors who continued the folk music traditions of Norway and Sweden. He was soon playing with "home environment" adult bands, learning the standard reperatory of Scandinavian-American folk dance music created by fiddlers and accordionists. In the late 1960s, LeRoy began recording this music throughout Minnesota, culminating in a Ph.D. dissertation in musicology and ethnomusicology at the University of Minnesota in 1975.
