Susanne Rosenberg

Teaching career

Rosenberg studied musicology at the Stockholm University and has a degree as a singing teacher from the Royal College of Music. She was a teacher at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki from 1987 to 1991. She has been a teacher at the Royal College of Music from 1992, now a lecturer and head of the department of folk music there.

Music career

Rosenberg is one of Sweden's most established folk music singers. She has great variety of vocal expression, seen in her traditional folk techniques such as kulning (cattle calling), as well as in Baroque, jazz and contemporary art music. She has been a pioneer in rediscovering old folk songs and using them in new artistic context. Rosenberg has often collaborated with composer Karin Rehnqvist and singer Lena Willemark. Rehnquist appreciated the singers' "command both of Swedish folk music and of complicated notation". She composed for them in 1989 her second major vocal composition, Puksanger & lockrop (Timpanum Songs – Herding Calls) for two singers and percussion, in which kulning "begins the piece and sets the atmosphere for the entire work", followed by a section based on "condescending traditional Finnish proverbs" about women, described as "highly effective satiric attacks on misogyny. This section is followed immediately by a kulning section, which represents a rebellion against the previous ideas". The singers performed the piece first at the 1989 Falun Folk Music Festival, also at the ISCM Festival in Stockholm in 1994. They were soloists in recordings of Rehnqvist's works on CDs, such as in 1996 Davids nimm with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1999 Solsangen with the Sundsvall Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Niklas Willen. Rosenberg has worked with directors such as Peter Oskarson and Leif Stinnerbom.

Rosenberg started two folk music groups, Rosenbergs Sjua or Rosenberg 7 (Rosenberg's Septet) and Rotvalta (Windthrow) and has toured with them in Europe, United States and Asia. She has released numerous records since the 1980s beginning with both groups and as a soloist. The album R7 of four singers with fiddle, viola and cello was reviewed as "sometimes ethereal, sometimes traditional, but always powerful and compelling".

Rosenberg was awarded the 2011 Award Arets traditionsbarare (Tradition keeper of the Year) at the world and folk music gala in Gothenburg.