Lars Hollmer

Active in music for over 40 years, Lars Hollmer first got together with his friends to play music in late-'60s Sweden. This band eventually became the legendary 'Rock In Opposition' band, Samla Mammas Manna. Concurrently towards the end of Samla's original life-span (the band reformed in the '00s and is recording and playing shows again), Lars started a solo career, where he emphasized his very personal compositions and his accordion-playing, of which he is a master. Lars' solo albums have a great warmth, intimacy, and even innocence to them. Although he makes music that can be abrasive and even purposefully a bit demented, with rough textures, quirky instrumentation, and unusual rhythms and time signatures, Hollmer's compositions are mostly tuneful and easy-going, sometimes catchy, and often disarmingly lovely. In addition to Lars' performance on accordions and keyboards, percussion and vocals, also appearing are Michel Berckmans (Univers Zero) on bassoon, English horn and oboe, Santiago Jimenez on violins and Andreas Tengberg on cello, among others.