Helga Myhr is a Hardanger fiddler from Torpo in Hallingdal; her record Andsyning is a 51-minute ensemble work issued by Heilo in 2022 and framed around a commission for Osafestivalen.
Myhr grew up in a family of folk musicians and dancers; her mother taught her fiddle and song, and traditional dance was part of her early education. She completed studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music in 2019, where encounters with contemporary and improvised music changed how she thought the Hardanger fiddle might function. Cellist and composer Tanja Orning is a recurring influence and later collaborator.
Andsyning was developed from that question: how to make a Hallingdal musician perform contemporary music. Originally commissioned and first played at Osafestivalen in October 2020, the seven-part work was recorded in 2021 and released on October 7, 2022; it was later nominated for a Folkelarm award in the open category (2023).
Rather than arranging old tunes as ornament, Myhr treats tradition as raw material—isolating bowing patterns, ornaments, rhythmic cells, melodic fragments and intonation quirks drawn from archive recordings of Hallingdal fiddlers such as Sevat Sataøen and Kristian Øvrevollseie. Three movements set lines by the Hallingdal poet Margit Lappegard.
The ensemble on Andsyning is built to test those fragments in different textures. Malin Alander supplies the principal voice; Rasmus Kjorstad adds fiddle, octave fiddle, langeleik and Jew’s harp; Adrian Fiskum Myhr plays double bass; Michaela Antalová provides percussion and willow flute. Myhr’s crediting of archival sources and her use of extended combinations of bowed, plucked and wind timbres places the record where folk practice, chamber composition and improvised music meet.
Myhr’s earlier work frames the project. Her 2019 solo debut, Natten veller seg ut, moved between hymnlike phrasing, dance-derived rhythm and sparse improvisation and received a Spellemann nomination; her quintet Morgonrode won the 2019 Spellemann award for folk/traditional music. Subsequent releases continued to map the same terrain: a duo record with Tanja Orning, Klangkorpus (2024), explored sustained string textures, and Slåttespel (2026) returned to unaccompanied Hallingdal tunes after Myhr won the Hardingfele A class at Landskappleiken in 2025.
Myhr’s practice treats preservation and experiment as complementary. Andsyning uses Hallingdal material not as heritage dressing but as a set of resilient, examinable elements: when they are pulled apart, the tradition yields forms that can be recombined without losing their ties to place. Hear more and find Myhr’s artist page on Bandcamp at helgamyhr.bandcamp.com, and view the Heilo release Andsyning on Heilo.
For Myhr, preservation and experiment are two horizons describing the same landscape.