Hillevi

In 2016 Emma Ahlberg Ek realized a project idea with the help of a collaboration grant from the Swedish Performing Arts Agency. The project was to put together an ensemble and create a musical and narrative show about the colorful violinist Hillevi Öberg (1897-1979). Hillevi participated in 1916, as the only woman (and only 18 years old!) in a fiddlers competition organized in Sundsvall. She impressed the jury with her powerful violin playing, and was awarded the third place position. Emma Ahlberg Ek decided to try and find out more about her. After searching for a few years, Emma had constructed a full view of Hillevi, and how she came to spend her entire life in service of music: Classical violin training in Germany led to employment as a cinema musician in Boden, later a musical bakery business and the first violin section in an orchestra in Kiruna. The show has been performed nine times since 2016, and has been met with great enthusiasm. And now, in anticipation of future performances, it is high time to record and release the music itself, consisting of Emma's original compositions, as well as arrangements of Hillevi's dance tunes.

Credits