Emma Reid

I was born in 1982 in Southern England to a Swedish mother and English father. When I was 3 1/2 years old my mother started teaching me the violin by the Suzuki method. As a child, I studied mostly classical violin music, but when musician friends of my mother visited, I always fell happily asleep on the sofa listening to Swedish folk tunes! When I was seven my family moved to the North of England, where there was a vibrant folk music culture that attracted me. I started playing together with two friends in a fiddle trio, 'The Riding Mill Fiddlers'. A few years later, I joined the ceilidh band 'The Hedgehog's Skin', and had regular gigs with them at weekends, playing at weddings or parties. Apart from British folk music, my mother and I often attended summer courses in Sweden, where we met musicians such as Jonny Soling, Kalle Almlöf, Ellika Frisell, Per Gudmunsson etc. During that time I was in my element, I had fallen in love with Swedish folk music! In 2000 I started the three-year folk music performance course at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.

I am currently in my final year, but I feel I have only just started to plumb the bottomless world of folk music! Most of all I have been inspired by my teachers (including Ellika Frisell, Sven Ahlbäck) and have had the opportunity to get to know different playing styles, and through that, develop my own. I have become particularly fond of music from Orsa and the crazy Bingsjö-playing of Nils Agenmark!