Morten Alfred Høirup

To say it as it is: I had 4-5 great days at the German Windros Festival during 5th to 9th of September making new friends, lots of rehearsing and some really fun concerts, with good musicians and composers that I met for the very first time.

Accordion player Jesper Vinther (Phønix, Ostinat Ekspressen) and I had a couple nice concerts as people was sitting close together listening to the music and the songs (‘Roots Music aus Kjøbenhavn’), and to our stories and explanations. This was our very first concert together ever, even though we have known each other for many years, but Jesper is super professional, so this was ‘piece of cake’, so to speak. A mix of old songs and traditional dance tunes, spiced up with a few of my compositions – all in new arrangements.

I always knew that the big challenge would be the work with the big Windros Festival Orchestra. There was a lot that we had to find time to teach each others, before we were supposed to do the main concert of the festival. But 2-3 days of intensive work did result in an absolutely awesome concert on Saturday night 10pm to 11:20pm, a concert with lots of new music, lots of minor mistakes, and lots of happy, singing, laughing – but also sometimes very serious – people in the audience.

It was good fun to be allowed to play on good German, English and Scottish coworkers music, but not the least fun when they played on my music, such as ‘Ingelas Waltz’, *The sorrow’, ‘Vindmills’ and a crazy and super simpel cajun tune  that I heard many years ago somewhere on the American east coas, that we ended up using as a funny encore making everybody in the audience sing along. That was one of the highlights for me. The concert was recorded for German radio!

If everything goes the way I hope, I’ll will be back in Windros next year with a friend and colleague, but more about that when all deals are done and settled.

A big thank you to Jesper Vinther, to my international colleague’s – and now also friends – and especially to mandolinist Wolfgang Meyering who organized the orchestra. And to the audience. Without you, this lifestyle wouldn’t make sense 🙂

Here you will find a little facebook video clip from the day after the main concert where we, on the final concert of the festival, plays Gavin Marwick’s composition ‘Firedance’, a small suite with a nice melody and a good grove.

On Saturday September 8th 2018, I am performing a couple of concerts at the little exclusive Windros Festival in Schwerin-Muess, about one hours drive from Lübeck in the Northern part of Germany.

The name of the festival is Windros Festival – “Weisen der Westsee”.

From September 5th to September 8th a number of invited musicians from different countries, are following the tradition by joining up to perform individual concerts at the festival, while at the same time spending a few days rehearsing for the final concert on Saturday night, where they all go on stage to entertain the festival audience.

For me it is a special festival as I get to perform with Jesper Vinther – a great accordion player also known from the Danish band Phønix – for the very first time.

Jesper and I will be playing a our special blend of traditional Danish music, old Danish songs and newly composed music – all arranged for accordion, guitar and vocals.

It is going to be really exciting to perform with Jesper, it is actually kind fun how we have known each other for so many years, without playing together. Now we have the perfect chance to do so. 

I also think that it will be super interesting to get to know the other musicians at the festival, even though it is going to be pretty hectic. We have to rehearse, discuss and – not to forget – choose which songs and tunes we want to use, of all the many good ones that the musicians are bringing for our common set list.

Amongst the artists at Windros Festival you will find:

The Fugitives (CAN), Cairo Steps (EGY/IRQ/D), Gavin Marwick & Ruth Morris (SCO), I Liguriani (IT), Simon Mayor & Hilary James (GB), Morten Alfred Høirup (DK), Wolfgang Meyering (D), Arezzo Rezvani (IR), Windros Orchester (Intern.) m. fl.

You will get more info at: http://www.windros-festival.de/

The Romainian cimbalom player George Mihalache, the Danish-Polish bass guitar player Andrzej Krejniuk and I, perform a mix of traditional music from our respektive countries, and our own compositions, spiced up with a few old Danish songs about sorrow, happiness, love – and other universal issues.

We are all experienced musicians and each of us has traveled the world with many different bands, playing all kinds of music from the gipsies rousing wedding music, over the bold Danish traditional music and to the often improvised jazz fusion, and when we meet and each bring our musical upbringing and background, true world music is being created.

We are so much looking forward to play this music for you. Our first concert is at Lundtofte Kirke (Lundtofte Church) in Kgs. Lyngby, Copenhagen Denmark on October 24th at 7:30 PM. Will we see you there?

I am right now working on six podcasts under the common heading: “Spillefolkenes Hemmeligheder – en rejse i dansk folkemusik” (The secrets of the musicians – a journey through Danish folk music”.

These podcasts are made for an audience who are not experts of folk music, but interested whatsoever, and each episode will be about 20 minutes long.

The idea is to let people who are outstanding personalities on the Danish folk music scene be answering some of the questions that they might get from when speaking to people from outside the normal folk music environment, questions like:

“Where do the fiddlers find the old traditional tunes?”, “How do you start your own folk festival?”, “Who are the young people in Danish folk music, and what are they up to?”, “Do the old naughty songs still make people blush?”, “What kind of music did the vikings play 1000 years ago, and what are they playing now?”, “Can you still use the ancient old songs and ballads now a days, and how do you find them in the first place?”, and so on.

These podcasts are expected to be ready around May 1st, but it has still not been decided where or when it will be published. That you can get more info about on this Facebook page! Spillefolkenes Hemmeligheder is sponsored by Tempi – Roots Music of Denmark and The Danish Arts Foundation.

We are also planning seven episodes of the podcast Katten i Sækken (The Cat in the Bag) during the next few month. Katten i Sækken is all about what is happening on the Danish folk music scene right now, and these episodes are also being sponsored by Tempi – Roots Music of Denmark and the Danish Arts Foundation, and supported by Rosa – The Danish Rock Council.

Katten i Sækken, that I produce, will be free to download on Radiofolk.dk once a month for the rest of 2018 – except for July where we are having a holiday break.

The May month edition can be listened to via this link!

On Radiofolk.dk you can also stream and download the pervious 49 episodes of Katten i Sækken, plus a lot of other folk music podcasts in Danish.

You might also be interested in the podcast serie Folk Live, where you can stream and down load quite a few podcasts with Danish trad, folk and roots music, recorded at the Danish Tønder Festival and hosted in English.

By the way – you can also find all our podcasts on iTunes!

OK, our trio Jensen, Bugge & Høirup has published a new video, recorded at Musik over Præstø Fjord Festival in August 2017. The spotlights was on in the old barn, which was decorated and had a nice dance floor for the occasion.

The Dance Barn was crowded during the 1 hour and 15 minutes while we played a set of music prepared for the occasion introducing a mix of traditional as well as newly composed music, arranged for dancing as well as listening.

The tunes is called Slottet (The Castle), and I composed this for a TV-show about a small castle, called Skovsgård, that was featured on Danish TV quite a few years ago. This was the first time that we used the tune for dancing, and it was wonderful to see how the dancers adopted the tune, and sang along while dancing.

Josh Stærk did the recording, Louise Nipper from Soundscape Studio did the mixing, and Grete Marie Jensen did the filming and edited the video.

You can see more videos from the dance here: www.dktrio.dk

I am looking forwards these days to a couple of rare concerts with good friends and colleagues, the Native American Métis fiddler, Jamie Fox, and the traditional Danish fiddler, Kristian Bugge.

In May 2017 we toured in the US, performing a few concerts at NorthWest FolkLife in Seattle (Washington, and at a few venues in Vancouver (Brittish Columbia), Missoula (Montana) and New York City.

Since then we have been doing a handful of dances and concerts in, amongst others, the Danish cities of Roskilde, Farum and Odense, where we have enjoyed playing for a lot of music enthusiasts.

And we are continuing the concerts in Denmark, first in Musikhuset Aarhus, on Sunday April 1st at 3:00pm, and then in Gaard Bageriet at Mors on Sunday April 22nd at 2:30.

The music is a blend of traditional Danish dance tunes, and tunes from the Métis fiddle tradition, “spiced up” with a couple of old Danish songs, and what ever we might decide on the spot, including a few stories about the many strong personalities that we have met on our tours.

I hope that you will enjoy this short teaser. We are playing a bit of the Métis tune “Sitting Bull”, that Jamie taught us.

It happens very rarely that I have to cancel concerts, especially when I am on tour on the other site of the globe, but it just happened when I was touring with violinist Ruthie Dornfeld on the American west coast in the beginning of 2018.

After the first couple of concerts it became obvious that I was infected with some nasty American virus, and after another couple of concerts on painkillers and rum toddies, we had to cancel a house concert in Seattle as well as a concert and a workshop at Bellingham Folk Festival.

We were of cause sad about that, but fortunately – before I got really sick – we got to arrange and rehearse a very different and well functioning repertoire of music, music that we also got to test at a handful of very cozy concerts for happy people of all ages.

That we are SO happy about, and we can’t wait until the next time we will meet and play music together.

Here is a small pirate video recorded one evening at The Honeymoon Mead & Cidery in Bellingham, by Jan Peters.

The tune is called Copenhagen Hoedown, it was composed by Ruthie Dornfeld and by the Finnish bass and jews harp player Tapani Varis, and recorded on ACO’s album “Nightmare Polka” from 2012.

The video was recorded in the beginning of the tour, and at this point I am only slightly ill, and keeping it going on a blend of hot mead and tea with milk and honey 🙂

OK, now it’s official! After a long time of playing as a guest with the Danish Duo Jensen & Bugge, we have finally decided to join forces for good, and start the trio Jensen, Bugge & Høirup.

We do play a mix of traditional Danish msuic, and music that we compose ourself, and we play both concerts for a seated and listening audience, and for a dancing audience.

During the late summer of 2017, we played for a lot of happy dancers in the old dance barn (Danseladen) at Musik over Præstø Fjord Festival. We had the whole session recorded and filmed, and in the video above this text, you can watch a clip from a wonderful evening with dancing and a great atmosphere.

We are playing a set of tunes from the little island Fanø, just west of Jutland, down south. The first tune Kristian composed while staying in Sønderho, the smallest and most southern of the two villages on the island, and the second one is the old sønderhoning, Lars Brinch’s Stykke.

You can follow our trio on our new website www.dktrio.dk, and on our Facebook page www.facebook.com/dktrio.dk

This year my old man and I celebrates that we have been performing together for 40 years – in fact we are pretty proud of it!

We have been doing all sorts of concerts at weddings, flea markets and harbor festivals.

During the last few years we have focused on folk clubs and festivals, and that has been a lot of fun, leading to visits at venues like Copenhagen Folk Club and Skagen Festival.

Our show features Fin Alfred and his many songs that he has learned during a long life with music, and the stories about them.

Last week we spend a wonderful evening at the Music Society of Drauget in Hørve in the Northern part of Sealand, and the couple of months, we’ll be touring in the beautiful Danish fall, while performing in Copenhagen, Vejle, Stubbekøbing and Svendborg.

Check out the venues in my calendar on this website, or at www.finalfred.dk