Marie Skavnes & Lars Berg

Marie Skavnes

Marie is 35 years old and comes from Vestnes in Romsdalen, Norway. She moved to Tretten in Gudbrandsdalen in 2003 and lives there with her family on a farm. She works as a veterinarian. Her grandfather, Magne Fagervik, was a popular dance fiddler in the 1930`s, mostly playing together with cello and clarinet. Unfortunately he died long before Marie was born, but luckily he wrote down lots of tunes and Marie is playing many of these. She also inherited her grandfather’s fiddle, which she prizes dearly.
 
Marie started to play fiddle at 7 years of age. She played in "Spelemannslaget Dåm og Drag" in Vestnes during the period 1991-1998, and this group came third at Landsfestivalen 1993, which is a national contest in traditional dance music. From 1998 to 2003 she went to veterinary school in Sweden and played a lot of swedish music during this period. She won a national contest (NM i trekkspel) in 2005 with the group "I og karan" and in 2012 she won the solo class at Landsfestivalen. She has also been the teacher for children learning to play fiddle.

Lars Berg
 
Lars is 41 years old and comes from Musdal, Tretten in Gudbrandsdalen, Norway. He lives on a farm that is part of a coop that produces milk, and he also works as an accountant. He grew up in a musical family, where his grandfather was a popular dance musician on accordion and also a brass band conductor. Lars started playing the organ at age 8 and then began taking lessons in accordion at 15. He’s been performing dance-music gigs from the age of 17, mostly in company with fiddle, but also in accordion and two-row accordion groups. Lars’ ensemble called Kniktlaget won the the ensemble division at national folk music festival Titanofestivalen in 2005. He started playing together with Marie Skavnes in 2005 performing as a duo, trio with song/guitar ("Plekter"), and as a quartet with guitar/base ("Avlaust").

Marie and Lars have played for many concerts and for dance ensembles. They play both traditional Norwegian folk music (halling, pols etc) and gammaldans music (waltz, reinlender, polka etc). They play tunes from many districts of Norway, including west coast tunes by Marie’s grandfather, and also tunes from Gudbrandsdalen and Røros. Check out the youtube of Marie's playing at the Landsfestivalen 2012 by scrolling down the page...



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