Join us on a journey through the darker, but fictional sides of Sweden – as seen and described by the numerous Swedish crime authors delighting fans of murder and mystery worldwide.
The exhibition Swedish Crime Scenes will take us from Ystad in the south to Kiruna in the north. A few years ago there were three Swedish crime fiction authors on the top ten list of most sold novels in Europe. Considering Sweden’s population of nine million, compared with over 800 million for Europe as a whole, it is something of a phenomenon. Sweden is not seen as a crime-ridden country but through authors like Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser, and many others, it has become known for fictional crimes.
Directed by Fridrik por Fridriksson. This is a story of a film director’s personal experience with Alzheimer’s disease as his mother slips into this descent. While he is having difficulty with his mother and her illness, he is also having financial problems because his film Children of Nature is not doing well in the Icelandic film marketplace. 90 minutes. In Icelandic with English subtitles. 2010.
Films start at 1:30pm. Refreshments for attendees are served at 1pm. Lunch (not included) is available in the Kaffestugan, which is open until 3pm every Saturday.
After their public showing movies in our film series become part of the Scandinavian Library’s collection of DVDs available for borrowing by Library members.
Presented as an official event of Newton’s Festival of the Arts and ArtWeek Boston, artist Anna Kristina Goransson and musician Maria Finkelmeier collaborate to create an interactive multimedia installation inspired by the sights and sounds of summer in Sweden. Goransson’s organic felted wool sculptures combine with Finkelmeier’s percussion-based soundscapes to immerse the spectator in the solace of Swedish summers. Read a blog post about their process here and here.
Reception: Thursday, May 7th 5:30-7:30pm (Artist Talk/Performance at 6:30pm)
Nordic Hall
Refreshments will be served.
About Kristina
Kristina spent her childhood in northern Sweden before moving to the United States in 1985. Art has always been a significant part of her life, helping her through not knowing English when she arrived in Atlanta, GA. Kristina entered more structured art making as an undergraduate at Rhode Island School of Design in 1994 where she received her BFA in Furniture. After graduating she spent two seasons at Anderson Ranch Arts Center assisting classes in the wood program before moving back to the East Coast.
Feeling ready for change, Kristina eventually went back to school for Fiber Arts at the University of Massachusetts and received her MFA in 2008. During graduate school, Kristina spent the first year exploring the different textile techniques until she found felt. Discovering the possibilities that felting had to offer, she spent the rest of her time in graduate school creating felted sculpture.
She continued her felted work as an artist-in-residence at Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2009. Kristina maintains her love for felting and continues to explore wool’s possibilities, finding new ways to push the limits of the material. She teaches workshops to educate others about the incredible versatility of wool along with other fibers processes. Kristina continues her work as a maker, creating art influenced by the beauty of form and pattern in nature.
About Maria
Described by the Boston Globe as “unfailingly energetic,” Maria Finkelmeier is a performer, educator, and active arts entrepreneur based in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to rooting in New England, she spent three years in Northern Sweden at the Piteå Institution for Music and Media as an artist in residence. She is co-founder of the international percussion group, Ensemble Evolution, with whom she has given performances and masterclasses throughout Europe, Australia, and the US. In 2013, Ensemble Evolution presented a showcase concert at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, performing their self-composed and released album “Sounds from the Treetops.” Maria’s clarinet and percussion duo, Clone Duo, has also performed internationally and recently merged with Sweden duo En Vokalist & En Cellist to create Quartet Kalos. Maria currently serves as Program Manager of the Entrepreneurial Musicianship Department at the New England Conservatory, helping to equip young artists with the skills they need to build fulfilling musical lives, directs the free outdoor music event Make Music Boston and is the Percussive Arts Society Massachusetts State Chapter President.
Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) crossed the Pacific Ocean in a balsa wood raft in 1947, together with five men, to prove that South Americans already back in pre-Columbian times could have crossed the sea and settle on Polynesian islands. After gathering financing for the trip with loans and donations, they set off on an epic 101 day-long journey across 8,000 kilometers, all while the world was watching. KON-TIKI tells about the origin of Heyerdahl’s idea and the events surrounding the group’s voyage. 118 minutes. In Norwegian with English subtitles. Presented as part of The Scandinavian Library’s Nordic Film Series.
Free; donations accepted.
Films start at 1:30pm. Refreshments for attendees are served at 1pm. Lunch (not included) is available in the Kaffestugan, which is open 11am to 3pm every Saturday.
After their public showing movies in our film series become part of the Scandinavian Library’s collection of DVDs available for borrowing by Library members.
Actress Kristín G. Magnus will tell you about historical events, mysterious folkstories such as the Hidden People, the Seal who turned into a Human Being, and a spine-tingling ghost story, complete with Icelandic music and chanting of old rhymes.
Geared for adults and children age 7 & up.
This is a charity performance to support “Vildarbörn” Icelandair’s Special Children Travel Fund.
About Kristín G. Magnús
Director, Producer, Actress, Playwright, Lecturer and Teacher of Dramatic Art and Improvisation, Magnús studied ballet at the National School of Ballet, Iceland and at the Ballet Rambert, London and graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), London. She was awarded the Gerald Lawrence Shakespeare Scholarship at RADA.
Magnús played various parts in television drama productions on the BBC and ITV in England. On stage in England, she participated in Charles Marowitz’s Workshop and played two roles in a touring production of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, directed by James Roose-Evans.
Set against the backdrop of WWII, The Last Sentence is based on the life of crusading journalist Torgny Segerstedt, editor-in-chief of one of Sweden’s leading newspapers, highlighting his one-man battle against Nazism and his country’s policy of appeasement to Hitler. 126 minutes. In Swedish with English subtitles. Presented as part of The Scandinavian Library’s Nordic Film Series.
Free; donations accepted.
Films start at 1:30pm. Refreshments for attendees are served at 1pm. Lunch (not included) is available in the Kaffestugan, which is open 11am to 3pm every Saturday.
After their public showing movies in our film series become part of the Scandinavian Library’s collection of DVDs available for borrowing by Library members.
A talk by Lo Dagerman about Swedish writer Stig Dagerman (1923-1954), and the project to re-introduce her father’s writing to an American readership. Lo will read from the short story collection SLEET published by Godine in 2013.
Reception with refreshments to follow talk.
Stig Dagerman was a leading existentialist Swedish writer
whose body of work has been compared to that of Albert
Camus, William Faulkner and Franz Kafka. While writing
of angst, sorrow, and all sorts of dilemmas of the human
condition, he also expressed and inspired compassion and
warmth. An annual prize in his name is given in Sweden
to authors who evidence the same qualities today.
Lo Dagerman is the daughter of Stig Dagerman and actress Anita Björk. Lo has lived in the United States for more than thirty years. She holds Master Degrees from MIT and JHU, and has most recently worked as a school counselor in the Washington D.C. area where she lives with her husband Brian Levy. Lo is a driving force in a project to re-introduce Stig Dagerman’s writing in the United States.
Join us for the first installment in the continuation of our Young Artists Series in our 2014-2015 season with pianist Pauline Yang who will perform works by Mendelssohn, Scarlatti, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and others.
ABOUT PAULINE
Pianist Pauline Yang began her piano studies at the age of five and won her first international competition at the age of seven in Washington, DC. In March of 1998, at the age of eleven, Ms. Yang made both her Philadelphia Orchestra debut as well as her solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall.
In the same year, Ms. Yang entered The Juilliard School, where she won both the Pre-College’s concerto and scholarship competitions in her first year. She has since studied with Lee Kum-Sing in Vancouver, Susan Starr in Philadelphia, and John Perry in Los Angeles. She has also studied and performed at a number of international music festivals, including the Warsaw Piano Workshop in Poland, International Holland Music Sessions in The Netherlands, Casalmaggiore Music Festival in Italy, Klaviersommerfest in Germany, Sarasota Music Festival in Florida, the Orford International Academy in Canada, and several others. Ms. Yang is on the faculty of Toby and Itzhak Perlman’s Perlman Music Program on Shelter Island, New York.
Her solo and chamber music appearances have taken her throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Highlights have included an invitation by the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation to represent the U.S. at the 22nd European Piano Teachers Association International Conference at the Franz Liszt Music Academy’s Grand Concert Hall in Budapest, performances with Lynn Harrell and Itzhak Perlman, the selection of her trio to perform in a series of master classes with Leon Fleisher, Pamela Frank and Yo-Yo Ma at the Professional Training Workshop at Carnegie Hall on the Chamber Music of Brahms, and appearances at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico.
She has served as an Ambassador of Music for “Music in ME,” a non-profit organization that works with the United Nations to bring music to children in the Middle East and continues to serve as a Volunteer Artist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Music for Food. Other appointments have included positions on the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors and the National Women’s Political Caucus’ Los Angeles Board of Directors.
During her undergraduate studies at the University of Southern California (USC), she was a double-major in piano performance and political science, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude and as a Renaissance Scholar. She received her masters in piano performance from USC and is currently pursuing a masters in international relations at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University where she is focusing on transatlantic cultural diplomacy. She has interned for Hillary Clinton in New York, for U.S. Representative Rush Holt on Capitol Hill, and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Government Information Office in Taiwan where she researched Taiwan’s cultural diplomacy efforts. Her work with Olympic athletes, along with her obsession with ballet, have also contributed to her passion for cultural diplomacy.
Ms. Yang was one of Glamour Magazine’s 2008 Top Ten College Women of the Year.
Latvian sculptor Gints Grinbergs works with a variety of metals, including copper, bronze and stainless steel, to create open forms. Welding metal spheres and partial spheres, he creates modern structures, for placement indoors or out. His sculptures have featured at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Michael Beauchemin Gallery, Boston and Lever House Gallery, New York, NY.
Join us for this special concert, presented during the Scandinavian Cultural Center’s weekly Kaffestugan. Enjoy Swedish pastries from Crown Bakery in Worcester, waffles and open-faced sandwiches – and bring your brunch into the Nordic Hall to hear Scandinavian vocal ensemble Stämbandet!
Journey through space and time as Stämbandet weaves Scandinavian life and lore into a tapestry of sounds. Experience voices echoing in the mountains and fjords of Norway, ride through the enchanted desert of Iceland, wander through the magical summer forests of Sweden and dance in the villages of Finland and Denmark. Stämbandet will take you on a musical odyssey you will never forget!
Founded in 1978, Stämbandet has a reputation for excellence both as an a cappella ensemble and a World Music vocal group. Presenting songs rarely heard outside of Iceland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden, this captivating vocal band often breaks into six- and seven- part harmonies sung in six languages.
Presented with support from the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation
Latvian sculptor Gints Grinbergs works with a variety of metals, including copper, bronze and stainless steel, to create open forms. Welding metal spheres and partial spheres, he creates modern structures, for placement indoors or out. His sculptures have featured at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Michael Beauchemin Gallery, Boston and Lever House Gallery, New York, NY.
