Dreamers' Circus

Part of our Performances Up Close series, audience is seated onstage alongside the musicians in an hour-long program.

“Two Danes and a Swede walked into a pub…no, not the opening line of a joke; rather, the beginning of a musical collaboration that has produced some of the most exciting new music to emanate from Scandinavia,” asserts Folk Radio. One of those Danes is none other than violinist Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen of the Danish String Quartet, appearing on our Concert Classics Series later this fall. With astounding acrobatics on violin, accordion/piano and the cittern (a relative of the mandolin), the young trio performs original, genre-bending compositions that blend vibrant Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic folk traditions with influences from jazz, classical, and pop music spheres—pushing the Nordic sound into an imaginative new realm. “The name Dreamers’ Circus is based on associations,” explains Sørensen. “Think of the vivid colors we associate with childhood memories of the Circus. Remember the magic of entering the tent as a child — the way our senses were engaged. In our music, we always strive to invoke a place of freedom, somewhere for our imagination to play in and a space for dreaming.”