voice, harp

Miriam Andersén
, Swedish singer and harper, studied singing, medieval harp, medieval notation and performance practice at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. Since then she has been a busy performer. She is in demand as a sublime interpreter of all medieval music styles, with the Gothic harp as a complement to her voice, but her repertoire also includes Swedish hymns and ballads, lute songs, baroque arias, and more modern names like Eric Satie, John Cage, Steve Reich and Sven-Erik Werner.

Apart from Sarband and her own ensembles Belladonna and Esk, she presently performs with Theatre of Voices, with whom she did the first performance of The Little Match Girl by David Lang which recently won the Pulitzer Prize. Concert tours have brought Miriam Andersén around the globe and she has recorded eighteen CDs with ensembles for medieval music such as Sarband, Esk, Belladonna, Ferrara Ensemble, Ensemble Gilles Binchois and Alba. In her own projects she arranges and reconstructs music and texts, often in collaboration with scholars of language and literature. She has set old Norse poems and parts of the rhymed chronicle Erikskrönikan to music. Miriam Andersén has also participated in several stage productions in Sweden (Mellby Scenkonst, Teater Nostra), Germany (Maxim Gorki Theater/Hebbel Theater), Switzerland (Theater Basel) Austria and Belgium (Toneelhuis). She gives workshops in medieval music. 

In 2007 she was awarded Anders Zorn’s silver badge for her cowhorn playing, along with the title riksspelman, which she shares with some of Sweden’s finest performers of traditional music.

Link to the personal website of Miriam Andersén.