Hi, everyone ! My name is Göran Hallmarken and I´m a Swede playing HG. I´ve play´d for ten years now and also I´m one of the fortunate few who´m have been accepted to a music academy playing HG as a main instrument. The school is the Royal music academy of Stockholm and the coarse is a three year program in folkmusic. I´m also one of the gang mourning that Leifs workshop burned down, though I never owned a HG by him ( but I had one borrowed for three years ). I´ve never even met Leif since he live on the other side of Sweden but his work and inspiration to all us swede´s goes offcause without saying.
for the last five years or so I´ve play´d a big Mousnier "bosch" HG that I purchased from Riccado Delfino and recorded an early music cd on it together with the ensemble Falsobordone situated in Skåne, south in Sweden. Nowaday´s I play more folkmusic (obviously) than earlymusic so I have my Mousnier out for sale in St:Chartier and I`m switching to a Weichselbaumer tenor with a sound better suited for the folkscene in sweden ( I play with a lot of fiddlers, ya`know ). My teacher´s name is Harald Pettersson ( Lure, Valramn, "Faust" ) and his development of a trompettstyle for playing the polskas is a pretty intresting story that I can tell you some other time ( in short it concens of a trip to Valentin Clastrier, some good tips and a lot of being alone in a country that has´nt so many HG players ), but the tecnical term of it could be "cote 4,5" :-S I also have the fortune to have teachers like Mickael Marin from Väsen and Ale Möller from Frifot in my schedual ! I should say that in Sweden the HG is not a common instrument and some even say that it is an outsider in the fauna of swedish folkinstrument. And since there mostly is fiddles here someone ( I don´t know who´m and IF I new I would not tell ) called the HG a fiddle... ..a TOMBOLAFIDDLE ;-( So, thats my presentation ! I guess I have the chance to meet some of y´all at the St:Chartier festival :-) Best regards Göran Hallmarken
