Swedish accordionist and singer Sunniva Brynnel is a seventh generation female musician, and she grew up near the forest and the salty sea in Uddevalla, in the West Coast province Bohuslän. Throughout her childhood, Sunniva travelled around Sweden with her mother, singer Rosa Brynnel, singing protest songs and folk songs on music stages as well as on the streets. The traditional music from county Bohuslän was always a part of Sunniva’s life, partly through her long-standing relationship with the local culture and folk music group Bokenäsets Ådra. The musical mission of Bokenäsets Ådra is to promote the conservation of Bohuslän’s traditional music, and Sunniva would often take part of the group’s gatherings with her mother. 

                  As Sunniva became an adult, she immediately started traveling the world and for a decade of her adult life she lived abroad: in Ireland, England and the USA. She studied traditional Irish folk music at DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama in Dublin, she has a bachelor’s degree in jazz composition from Leeds College of Music in England, as well as a master’s degree in contemporary improvisation from New England Conservatory, Boston, USA. In all the countries and cities that she lived, Sunniva studied the local folk music; many a night was also spent jamming tunes at merry and busy folk music sessions. She studied classical Indian music in both England and USA, as well as performing and recording her original music with her own jazz groups in both countries. For a couple of intense years, Sunniva toured with her American/Swedish folk music sextet Night Tree, comprised of six virtuosic musicians all sharing a love for music from the British Isles. Night Tree recorded two albums (partially consisting of Sunniva’s original music), appeared on American folk radio charts and performed around 150 concerts in the US over two years.

Since 2016, Sunniva has also released three albums with her original music as a band leader.

Sunniva Brynnel took all these musical influences with her into the studio as she arranged and recorded the music of her home county Bohuslän. For many years, she has performed and taught this music, and throughout these years she kept searching for her personal expression within the tradition. She experimented with dressing the tunes in new harmonic landscapes, extending melodic forms, adding bars of melodic pauses within tune structures, incorporating improvisation as well as playing around with tempos and rhythmic approaches. When she arrived at a sound that made her feel something, she felt ready to record this music.

                  Also playing on this record are some of the finest folk musicians in the Nordic countries: Finnish pianist/composer Timo Alakotila (Sunniva and Timo released an originals album in 2016), as well as Swedish fiddlers Hans Kennemark and Jenny Gustafsson, who both has the distinguished title riksspelman, national fiddler, in Sweden.