Dreamers’ Circus US SPRING Tour 2023
Photo: Søren Lynggaard
DREAMERS' CIRCUS EMBARKS ON U.S. TOUR
February 24 – March 5, 2023
Friday, February 24, 8:00 pm | Boston, MA
Celebrity Series of Boston (Debut) / Info & Tix
Sunday, February 26, 3:00 pm | Orono, ME
The Collins Center for the Arts / Info & Tix
Monday, February 27, 7:30 pm | New York City
Music Mondays (Debut) / Info & Tix
Thursday, March 2, 8:00 pm | Detroit, MI
Detroit Chamber Music Society (Debut) / Info & Tix
Friday, March 3, 7:30 pm | San Francisco, CA
San Francisco Performances (Debut) / Info & Tix
Sunday, March 5, 4:00 pm | Portland, OR
Portland Friends of Chamber Music / Info & Tix
“They’re world class. Now the world needs to hear them.”
SingOut!
“Dreamers’ Circus does for Nordic folk music, what Astor Piazolla and the tango nuevo did for Argentinian folk music.”
Politiken (Denmark)
New York, NY: February 1, 2023 -- Dreamers' Circus, performing original Nordic folk music, returns to the U.S. for a six-city winter tour, February 24 to March 5, with stops in Boston, Orono (ME), New York City, Detroit, San Francisco and Portland (OR). The trio, two Danes and a Swede, are Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen (also a member of the renowned Danish String Quartet), pianist and accordionist Nikolaj Busk and Nordic-cittern player Ale Carr (from Sweden).
Winners of five Danish Music Awards, the trio’s sound is based on virtuosic and incendiary musical ability across a range of instruments that includes violin, accordion, piano and cittern. The trio was recently named "2023 Artist of the Year" by the Danish national classical radio channel P2—the first non-classical group to earn that honor. Endlessly exploring new challenges for themselves and for audiences, Dreamers’ Circus mine their backgrounds in traditional and roots music to present a genre-bending amalgam of folk sensibility, jazz improvisation and classical complexity distilled through an openness to popular music influences.
Violinist Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen recently appeared on The Strad Podcast to talk about the trio's recent project, Handed On: a published book of 58 pieces of their own Nordic folk music, arranged for varying degrees of difficulty, along with videos to accompany each tune. Rune explained that this is the music the band grew up with -- his parents met through folk dancing and and loved to sing and listen to local folk music. "I actually started playing folk music when I was 3 or 4 years old, and that's the case with all the members of the trio." This is also the music that brought the group together, and they hope to give people at taste of the Nordic folk sound. "It's important," he said, "because in many ways, the folk music opens a window to who we are as people, as a culture, as a country. [Denmark] is a little region in the big world [and].... It's hundreds of years of music that can really speak to not only your feet, like with dance music, but also to your mind and your heart."
Listen to the Strad Podcast here, or read an interview with Rune on The Violin Channel.
Dreamers' Circus just released a double-vinyl album of their two most recent recordings of original tunes, Blue White Gold (for which the Trio was awarded the prestigious Carl Prize for Composer of the Year in 2021) and Lost Swans (2022).
Double Vinyl available worldwide from folkshop.dk
Stream & Download ‘The Lost Swans’ Here
Stream & Download ‘Blue White Gold’ Here
[Video: Blue White Gold album teaser]
Dreamers’ Circus Projects and Collaborations
In addition to writing and performing their own music, Dreamers’ Circus is a frequent collaborator on projects with other musicians, for example:
Playing the music for the video game Chrono Cross, including: Sailing and Termina, a collaboration with Japanese composer Yasunori Mitsuda
Performing and arranging music for a collaboration with the DR Børnekoret (Danish Radio’s Children's Choir) on an album of Danish children’s folk songs (June 2022). Watch here.
Collaborating with renowned Danish fiddler Poul Bjerager Christiansen on an initiative to bring traditional folk music to life from centuries-old handwritten scores. Walz and Gammel Reel.
Photo: Kristian Wanvik
About Dreamers’ Circus
Late one night in 2009 Nikolaj Busk pushed open the door of a bar in Copenhagen and chanced upon fiddle player Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and cittern player, Ale Carr, playing some traditional Nordic tunes. Spotting a piano in the corner of the room Nikolaj joined the pair. Within minutes it became clear that there was an instant musical chemistry happening. Read the rest of the story here.