Elise Boeur & Adam Iredale-Gray (ON, Canada)

Members of JUNO nominated, Canadian Folk Music Award winning neo-folk quintet Aerialists, Elise Boeur & Adam Iredale-Gray explore fiddle music in fluid, easy lockstep. Fiddler and Hardanger fiddle player Elise Boeur draws from the wells of Norwegian and Swedish fiddle music, melds in fistfuls of arcane influences, and emerges with a multi-faceted sound grounded in Nordic traditions. A founding member of indie-folk band Fish & Bird, Adam Iredale-Gray is a versatile guitarist and fiddler with deep roots in Irish traditional music and a commitment to innovation. They each spent years touring as collaborators with diverse projects, and all along they were playing fiddle tunes at sessions, folk dances, and afterparties. With this duo project, you’re invited into these social music afterhours, as they dig into their favourite tunes on hardingfele, guitar, and raging twin fiddles.

Their show is a masterful exploration of traditional music collected from years of travel and immersion in aural traditions. A Norwegian gangar learned in the mountains of Telemark, Irish jigs picked up from countless sessions, a modern Icelandic jazz tune from a favourite record, a Swedish polska lifted from a community dance – the thread that connects these pieces is Boeur and Iredale-Gray’s open-hearted, contagious love of the melodies. Their new album Fiddle Tunes is exactly what the title promises; a celebration of the experience of sharing fiddle traditions the way they’ve been shared for centuries, the tune recreating itself anew with each repetition as folks sit knee to knee and play.

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“There is an almost telepathic level of communication between the players” Fatea

“Gripping and visceral” Folkworld