Tjärnblom, Swedish for “woodland lake flower”, is a Scandinavian-style string band featuring a beautiful blend of nyckelharpa, octave mandolin, harmonium and cello. They travel a musical journey along “Snoose Boulevard,” playing a repertoire of old and new Swedish, Finnish, and Minnesota tunes for dancing and for listening. They’ve performed across the state of Minnesota and have appeared on Minnesota Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion show. The name Tjärnblom is in honor of the Swedish grandfather of one of the band members.
Cheryl Paschke started playing violin in the fourth grade after attending a school assembly program about joining the school orchestra. She did join the school orchestra, which later led to college and community orchestras, a string quartet, English country-dance band, Swedish fiddle and Finnish dance groups as well as a career in music and arts education. Cheryl started playing nyckelharpa as an adult, having first encountered the instrument in Sweden at a Midsommar celebration where several nyckelharpa players were jamming together. Seeing Cheryl’s interest, one of the players offered to let her ‘try’ the instrument. After a quick scale to check what notes were where, “Johan pa Snippen” came to mind, and her fingers were hooked!
Joe Alfano is another baby boomer whose life took a sharp turn after he saw the Beatles play on the Ed Sullivan Show. He spent the next 6 months shoveling snow and mowing lawns to save up enough money to buy a guitar. Learning how to play it has been a lifelong obsession. Another sharp turn in his life happened when Joe met Cheryl in 1998 after a Väsen concert at the Cedar Cultural Center and she opened the door to Scandinavian music. Joe plays guitar and three sizes of mandolin with musician friends around the Twin Cities.
Val Eng began her church music career at age twelve and has been music director for various area churches, most recently for a Hispanic congregation. She’s deeply attracted to folk music, is a shape-note singer, and discovered that Nordic music makes her Norwegian blood boil by dancing to it. She’s a piano teacher and provides music for area arts camps.
Erin Walsh is a multi-instrumentalist who chose cello as a young girl because she liked the sound of harmony parts. Soon she was singing melodies and playing cello harmony at the same time, when not busy putting on extravagant dance performances to her parents’ classical records. Now she enjoys community orchestra, and plays in: Compass Rose String Band (at Tapestry Folkdance Center), Twin Cities Nyckelharpalag, the ASI Spelmanslag, Fallen From the Turnip Truck (roots music), and is a former performer with the Ethnic Dance Theatre. She is an elementary string music teacher, private string and piano teacher, and clinician. Her country home houses a diverse collection of instruments, including five-string fiddle, banjo, cajon, upright bass, accordion, näverlur, musical saw, alto horn, shawm, and many more. Her secret passion is composing music of all types, and she keeps staff paper in her car just in case of a random idea!
The NMM Live! Series is made possible by the USD Student Government Association and the South Dakota Arts Council through the Department of Tourism, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
This event will be livestreamed at https://www.nmmusd.org/nmm-live-video
