SVER & Moira Smiley

This international partnership takes new & traditional fiddle-driven tunes from Scandinavia and melds them with wild, lonesome, and original songs. Smiley’s plaintive, powerful voice weaves between the fiery, inventive forces of SVER’s fiddles, accordion, guitar and drums.

When Norwegian/Swedish folk-rockers SVER took Womex 2018 by storm, many commentators marveled at the power and joie de vivre of the performance. A new discovery they may have been for some, yet they are no new kids on the block and had been steadily winning prominence playing extensively in Europe and the USA, to become regarded as one of the most dynamic bands to emerge from the Nordic folk scene. Olav Luksengård Mjelva, Anders Hall, Leif Ingvar Ranøien, Adam Johansson, and Jens Linell make up this group; however, Ingvar will be unable to join the festivities at Tourterelle on Sept. 20, so the other four members will bring even more energy.

Smiley has also earned a name far beyond her home. Smiley’s career has produced award-winning ensembles and recordings of experimental, emotional music. Always improvisational in her approach, Smiley marries her study of traditional folk-song with an avant-garde sensibility. She accompanies herself on banjo, accordion, piano and percussive movement while performing solo, or with her vocal group, VOCO. Smiley has also toured and recorded with indie-pop favorite tUnE-yArDs, Irish super-group Solas, the pioneering Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project, multi-grammy winner Billy Childs’ “Laura Nyro Re-Imagined,” Paul Hillier and KITKA. You may have seen her on BBC TV and Radio, NPR, or PBS. She is well-known and beloved around the world as a choral composer and arranger — with millions of singers worldwide singing her music, and a Carnegie Hall concert featuring her music, coming in the spring of 2020.