Album Notes

Hambo in the Snow, featuring Washington, DC-area musicians Andrea Hoag, Loretta Kelley, and Charlie Pilzer, has been nominated in the Best Traditional World Music Album category for the 49th Annual GRAMMY® Awards, to be held in Los Angeles, CA in February 2007.

On the other side of the year, the Land of the Midnight Sun is a land of long, dark winter. But winter in Scandinavia is also a time of light: the moon's reflection on snow, the levande ljus (living light) of candles and torches, and the inward light that comes with honoring beloved traditions.

Here are some of the tunes that have become our favorites over the years of performing together. Most of these tunes come from the ancient bygdedans (village dance) tradition. Each locality had its own form of polska or springar, with its unique rhythmic variation of 3/4-time. There are also walking tunes and bridal marches here, and the relatively new (19th-century) dance forms of waltz, hambo, and polka.

Andrea Hoag - fiddle,vocals
Loretta Kelley - fiddle, hardingfele, vocals
Charlie Pilzer - bass, one and two row accordions

Andrea Hoag, Loretta Kelley, and Charlie Pilzer have been performing across the U.S. and in Europe for over 25 years, including appearances on All Things Considered, Performance Today, and Prairie Home Companion. They can be heard together on Hambo in the Barn (Azalea City Recordings ACCD-9601), and individually on numerous other recordings.

Andrea is a graduate of Malungs Folkhögskola’s Folk Violin Pedagogy course, and has studied with elder fiddlers Päkkos Gustaf and Nils Agenmark. She performs and records music ranging from Cajun to southern Appalachian to Irish, and has been guest faculty at Berklee College of Music and Sweden's Värmland Folk Music School.

Loretta, America's foremost player of the Norwegian hardingfele (Hardanger fiddle), has made nearly twenty trips to Norway to study with master fiddlers, and has placed highly in Norwegian fiddle competitions. In 1994 her playing was featured in an hour-long program on Norwegian radio.

Charlie's career includes performing, producing and engineering award-winning traditional music. Since the 1970s he has been a member of Spælimenninir, a Scandinavian folk band based in the Faroe Islands. He is well known as a dance musician (piano and bass) for New England and Scandinavian folk dances.

Thanks to technology called Direct Stream Digital (DSD) encoding, a Super Audio CD or SACD represents the highest quality sound source available today. This is a hybrid SACD containing a CD layer that is playable by all CD players and a DSD stereo and surround layer that is playable by SACD players. To enjoy the surround sound, you will need an SACD player, the correct amplification, and 5 speakers.

Azalea City Recordings - ACCD-0602