Swedish Midsummer Celebration
On Jaffrey Center Common June 25

You can share the experience; click here

Midsummer in Sweden
Painting of "Midsummer Dance" (Midsommardans), 1897, by Swedish painter Anders
Zorn (1860-1920). The Midsummer Pole is at the upper right. Painting is in the National
Museum, Stockholm; photo in public domain via Wikipedia Commons.

The First Church in Jaffrey invites the public to an authentic Swedish Midsummer
Celebration with traditional music, dancing around the midsummer pole, and
refreshments on Saturday, June 25 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on the Jaffrey Center
Common by the Meetinghouse at Route 124 and Laban Ainsworth Way.

The celebration features noted fiddler, soprano, folklorist and performer Andrea
Larson of Wilton, NH, who loves the Scandinavian traditions of folklore and music.
First Church Minister of Music Gene Faxon will accompany her on accordion. They
collaborated at The First Church's New Year's Wassail Concert on Jan. 2.

Midsummer celebrates the summer solstice, when daylight lasts until late in the evening.
In parts of Northern Europe the sun never sets this time of the year. On Midsummer
Eve, each community will raise a Midsummer Pole decorated with birch branches and
wildflowers. Families gather to enjoy an afternoon of traditional music, dancing and
games.

First Church parishioners will raise the traditional Midsummer Pole on the Meetinghouse
common in front of the First Church in Jaffrey. There will be live music, dancing around
the Midsummer Pole, and games for the kids. Cookies and lemonade will be served.

Andrea Larson's passion for almost two decades–Swedish folk music and dance–has
led to performances in museums, churches and schools in the northeast US and Sweden.
She has fiddled for Christmas Revels in New York and Boston and toured nationally as a
soprano in the Waverly Consort's "American Journey."

Larson's recent travel includes a trip to England with Orion Sword and as special guest
with the Grammy-nominated trio, HKP, for their Scandinavian Christmas Concert at
the Institute of Musical Traditions in Washington, D.C. She gave a university lecture
on Swedish fiddle and dance this February at UMass/Amherst. She teaches fiddle at her
Wilton home.

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