To attend this concert in person: click here to reserve your seat.
Benjin is a multi-instrumentalist who has toured across Europe with a number of experimental ensembles over the last 15 years. His solo compositions use classical guitar, cello, harp, clarinet, vocals, nyckelharpa, field recordings and found sounds. Aside from regular concert performances and art installations, Benjin's music has been featured on BBC Radio 6 and Radio 3, at the TATE and Serpentine Galleries.
“Music for Cello and Nyckelharpa”, Benjin’s 9th solo full-length album, is a musical conversation between the cello and its lesser-known cousin, the nyckelharpa. Translated into English as a ‘keyed fiddle’ or literally a ‘key harp’, the nyckelharpa is a bowed instrument with three melody strings, one drone and twelve sympathetic strings (which give it its unique ethereal sound). Over the last two centuries, the nyckelharpa has been primarily upheld as the national instrument of Sweden where it is generally played in a variety of folk-dance music contexts. However, traces of premodern iterations of the keyed fiddle can be found across Europe. Given this pan-European lineage, the music contained in this concert seeks to expand our ideas of the nyckelharpa and to reach beyond discrete national boundaries or repertoires. So here, amongst original compositions, a Bach violin sonata and dense free form improvisations, you will also find Benjin's minimalist arrangements of the Swedish lament ‘Vem Kan Segla Förutan Vind?’ (Who Can Sail Without the Wind?) and the Abbotts Bromley Horn Dance, a British folk song which can be traced back to the 1200s.
To attend this concert in person: click here to reserve your seat.
Benjin is a multi-instrumentalist who has toured across Europe with a number of experimental ensembles over the last 15 years. His solo compositions use classical guitar, cello, harp, clarinet, vocals, nyckelharpa, field recordings and found sounds. Aside from regular concert performances and art installations, Benjin's music has been featured on BBC Radio 6 and Radio 3, at the TATE and Serpentine Galleries.
“Music for Cello and Nyckelharpa”, Benjin’s 9th solo full-length album, is a musical conversation between the cello and its lesser-known cousin, the nyckelharpa. Translated into English as a ‘keyed fiddle’ or literally a ‘key harp’, the nyckelharpa is a bowed instrument with three melody strings, one drone and twelve sympathetic strings (which give it its unique ethereal sound). Over the last two centuries, the nyckelharpa has been primarily upheld as the national instrument of Sweden where it is generally played in a variety of folk-dance music contexts. However, traces of premodern iterations of the keyed fiddle can be found across Europe. Given this pan-European lineage, the music contained in this concert seeks to expand our ideas of the nyckelharpa and to reach beyond discrete national boundaries or repertoires. So here, amongst original compositions, a Bach violin sonata and dense free form improvisations, you will also find Benjin's minimalist arrangements of the Swedish lament ‘Vem Kan Segla Förutan Vind?’ (Who Can Sail Without the Wind?) and the Abbotts Bromley Horn Dance, a British folk song which can be traced back to the 1200s.