Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Sigmund Groven interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 127

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Sigmund Groven joins me on episode 127. 
Sigmund is a chromatic player who is a household name in his native Norway. 
He was inspired to take up the harmonica after hearing Tommy Reilly on the radio. After taking  some lessons with Tommy they formed a lifelong friendship, with Sigmund even becoming his manager.
Sigmund has released over thirty albums in his own name through his illustrious career and has played in venues and orchestras around the world, including Carnegie Hall, throughout Europe and in Asia, where he enjoyed chart success in South Korea. He plays classical, pop, contemporary, light music and Norwegian Folk and still enjoys recording and performing regularly. 

Links:
Sigmund’s website:
https://sigmundgroven.com/

Sigmund's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/TheSigmundGrovenPage

Discography:
https://sigmundgroven.com/discography/

Videos:
75th birthday concert on Norwegian TV:
https://tv.nrk.no/serie/kork-hele-landets-orkester/sesong/2021/episode/MKKA11001721

Tommy Reilly playing Colors Of My Life:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eCEv-J-kL4

Playing with the pipe organ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkvAcaoMVXY

Playing at Jersey festival in 1987, with James Moody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS7GSLCaxO8


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
--------------------------------
Blue Moon Harmonicas: https://bluemoonharmonicas.com


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SPEAKER_02:

Sigmund Groven joins me on episode 127. Sigmund is a chromatic player who has a household name in his native Norway. He was inspired to take up the harmonica after hearing Tommy Riley on the radio. After taking some lessons with Tommy, they formed a lifelong friendship, with Sigmund even becoming his manager. Sigmund has released over 30 albums in his own name through his illustrious career, and has played in venues and orchestras around the world, including Carnegie Hall throughout Europe and in Asia, where he enjoyed chart success in South Korea. He plays classical pop contemporary light music and Norwegian folk and still enjoys recording and performing regularly. This podcast is sponsored by Seidel Harmonicas. Visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seidel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Seidel Harmonicas. Hello, Sigmund Groven, and welcome to the podcast. Hello, Neil. Thanks so much for joining, Sigmund. So, you're talking to us from Norway, where you are a household name on the harmonica, is that correct? Well, I've

SPEAKER_03:

been around for quite a while, and I've played a lot of concerts and done a lot of radio and television. So, over the years, you know, I've played for many people and made lots of recordings. So, a lot of people here associate, when they hear about the harmonica, they're usually associated with me. You were born in Heddal, which is in the county of Telemark. About two hours drive from Oslo, southwest of Oslo, which is the capital.

SPEAKER_02:

Great. So as you say, though, you've featured on television and radio there, but you just a few years ago celebrated your 75th birthday and there was a concert on TV sort of devoted to that. Yeah,

SPEAKER_03:

that's right. Yes, which also happened to be the not only my 75th birthday, but also the 75th anniversary of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. which was founded the same year that I was born.

SPEAKER_02:

So it was a

SPEAKER_03:

very happy occasion. I

SPEAKER_02:

think before you started playing harmonica or before you started concentrating on music, you worked for the sort of Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation as an announcer and presenter and music producer. Is that right?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, it was all parallel in a way because everything happened at the same time. I was at university. And I was offered a part-time sort of freelance job as an announcer. And I had already started broadcasting with my harmonica. I did my first radio concert. as long ago, would you believe it, as 1965. I was very young then, mind you. So everything happened at the same time as it were, while still being at university, playing my harmonica and doing work on the radio as an announcer and later, as you mentioned, as a producer. So it was a very busy time. And after a while, I had to leave out some of those activities because it was getting too much. So I concentrated on the music side, you know, with my harmonica and also writing music, which was slowly growing.

SPEAKER_02:

So you're a chromatic harmonica player, yeah? Oh, yes. Tell us how you got into playing the chromatic harmonica.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I can tell you exactly when it started. I was nine years old. I was sitting together with my friend on a Saturday afternoon waiting for Children's Hour on the radio, which was the main programme that all the children used to listen to. And just before the children's programme started, there was music on the radio and there was a record played which really caught my interest. I really got so hooked on it. It was a strange experience because it hit me like a lightning bolt. I noticed what the announcer said after the record had been played, and the announcement came, this was Firefly by Donald Phillips, played by Tommy Riley.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_03:

And as I said, this made such an impression on me that from that moment on. The harmonica became my instrument, and Tommy Riley was my idol, and I was very fortunate in meeting him at the early age of 14. After having heard his recording on the radio, I wrote fan letters, and I got a nice reply from him, and then I started getting the BBC Radio Times, because in those days, this was late 50s, Tommy was always on the BBC. He also could be heard on most other radio stations in Europe, so I tried to track him down and listen to whatever I could manage to hear from his records and his performances. My father got me a chromatic harmonica. My father was an amateur musician. He was a headmaster at a school, but he was an amateur fiddle player, violin, and also the Norwegian national instrument, the hardanger fiddle. So he was very knowledgeable about music. So, of course, there was no teachers in Norway, nobody who knew anything about the chromatic. So that's why I tried to emulate what I heard. when listening to Tommy Riley on the radio. And as mentioned, when I was 14, I was very fortunate in meeting Tommy. He came to Oslo to play with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and I was invited by the conductor of the radio orchestra to come and meet Tommy and his wife, Ina, which was a like a dream come true for the 14 year old country boy. So and Tommy was, he was so generous and helpful. So he gave me my very first lesson. Do you remember what he taught you in that first lesson? Yes, I do. Because two of the most important things to get the right hand position and the right mouth position using the tongue on the instrument the tongue blocking method which was which he always used and so I had to concentrate on that because I had been on my own I had just been playing the pucker method you know with just And also, I didn't hold the harmonica very well either. So those two things, he said, you concentrate on those two things until I see you again next time.

SPEAKER_02:

And so you did see him again. Did you have lessons with him at age 17?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, he came back to play in Norway two years later when I was 16, actually. Then he continued giving me some very, well, some invaluable lessons. tips on on the actual playing of the instrument and on that trip he brought his son david who is one year younger than me so we became great friends and we're i mean even even today we're about almost like brothers you know so that was how it developed and then it continued from there

SPEAKER_02:

You became very close to Tommy, as you say, you're very close to his son. You were his son's best man at his wedding, I understand. That's right, yeah. So how did your relationship with Tommy develop? Did you come across the UK and stay with him or see him there?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, I did. Yes, I did. So from then on, it was back and forth to England and lots of things were happening. You know, I also invited him to meet my family in In Telemark. And so the relationship developed. So it was almost, it was like family, you know, and this was the time around the time when lots of things were happening in Tommy's career. He developed the first silver coin. concert harmonica, 1967, and Tommy and his wife Ina, they bought a beautiful house and property called Hammonds Wood in Surrey and started what they called Tommy Riley's International Harmonica Club. He had been asked by so many harmonica players from different countries whether he could give them lessons. So that's why they started the teaching of At Hammerswood from 1968 onwards with players coming from all over the world, actually from Asia and from different European countries and so on and so forth. And I was part of that. So it all grew. It was developing rapidly.

SPEAKER_02:

And you became Tommy's manager. At what point did that happen?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, that happened around that same time because this was 1967. And at that time, he was not really making any recordings. He had been making lots of records during the 50s and the early 60s, but nothing was happening on that front. And I had this urge to make something happen. So I managed to make contact with Norwegian Polydor. Polydor was one of the big recording companies internationally in those days, and they had a very enterprising Norwegian branch. So I went to see the manager there and I said, you should make an album, an LP with Tommy Riley. And of course, by that time, Tommy was already a household name in Norway, very popular through his concerts and his television shows and broadcasts and so forth. So I managed to set up this recording in Oslo in 1967, which was the first time he actually used his silver harmonica on a recording. The LP was called Colors of My Life, included some wonderful new songs written by David, Tommy's son, who at that time was collaborating very closely with a very popular Australian group, The Seekers. Judith Durham, who was the lead singer in The Seekers, she co-wrote with David some wonderful songs, including the title track of Tommy's LP, Colors of My Life. So we made it so that one side of the LP was sort of pop music and the other side was classical. So it ranged from David and Judith's new songs to music by Bach on the other side with string quartet. This was the first time that Polydor Norway managed to sell one of their products to Polydor International headquarters in Hamburg. So Colours of My Life was getting a world release. I think that was one of the things that prompted Tommy to say that he was at that time doing a lot of correspondence himself with all the different contacts he had in Europe. He was doing lots of concerts, broadcasts and television shows all over Europe. He said, I can't keep up with all this myself. You know, I'd like you to look after this for me, having seen that we were able to make this LP, which was becoming so successful. That's how it all started. And he said, it's much better for you to do it because, he said, as a personal manager, It's very rare to find somebody who actually understands the music and understands the instrument, because by that time I was well on my way to making quite a successful career myself as a player.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And you recorded an album with Tommy in 1976 called Music for Two Harmonicas. That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

He invited me to go with him on his tours on the continent. You know, I traveled with him throughout Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. All those trips he was teaching me as, you know, in between times when we got to a hotel or wherever we were staying. It all started with these duet things when we were in Berlin. Tommy did a lot of work in West Berlin for the radio there. And the conductor of the radio orchestra in Rias, Berlin, was Frid Walter, a very, very fine composer who had already written some great pieces for Tommy. And he heard, one day he heard Tommy and myself playing together, Tommy giving me a lesson in the dressing room of the radio station. That prompted him to write a piece for us. He wrote a piece called Duettino for two harmonicas and orchestra, which we recorded in Berlin with the Berlin Radio Orchestra in 1969. And then I made my first solo album in Norway a few years later, because Tommy said, I think we should make an LP together. But he said, first, you should make your own LP to sort of establish yourself as a recording artist, not just being sort of helped by me, he said. So I made my first solo LP in 1975. And then the year after, 1976, we made... the album which you mentioned, Music for Two Harmonicas.

SPEAKER_02:

And so you knew, obviously, Tommy, you know, to the end of his life, and you appeared with him in 1999 at a music festival in England, so right up to near the end there.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, yeah, yes. Well, it was, as I said, it was like family. A very happy association in every way.

SPEAKER_02:

So fantastic. Yes. So great. You had all that time with Tommy and clearly he taught you a lot and shaped your playing. I mean, any comments on, you know, what you learned from him? And, you know, obviously he was a, you know, a monster of a chromatic player, right? So what did he do for your playing?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I think the whole attitude towards music was one of the main things, you know, because he always said music comes first. If you're making music, that is the main thing. And the harmonica, is your vehicle to make music the way you feel about it. And music is not just notes. It's emotion and feeling. And harmonica is a great instrument to express yourself because, as we know, it's the only instrument which is played both by inhaling and exhaling, blowing and drawing. So it's like part of your breath. So it's a very personal instrument. And that's one of the things that Tommy always... maintained that you should make it as a part of your own body and your own personality. And then, of course, the technical side of it. He had gone into developing this technique in a very profound and deep way during his time during the war, when he was a prisoner of war. So, personality, tone quality, and... Joining notes together, getting the smoothness, the change between blowing and drawing so smooth that the listener shouldn't be able to tell whether you're blowing or drawing. Moving from one note to the next one seamlessly. So control, breath control, movement, musical shape and form. And how to practice, all those things were essential in the way I was sort of developing and growing as a musician.

SPEAKER_02:

So fortunate for you to have lessons with one of the best, yeah? So obviously it's reflected in your own playing. So, I mean, you'd mentioned there about how to practice. So what about a comment on that? I mean, how have you practiced through the years to develop your tremendous technique and tone yourself?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, it's based a lot on the fundamentals of moving from one note to the next and concentration. When you're learning a new piece, for instance, to make sure that you work on the bits which are the most difficult parts of the piece, you know. And also I have learned a lot from all the fantastic musicians that I have worked with not only here in Norway, but, you know, through my career elsewhere. I've been very fortunate in having some excellent musicians as partners in duo for harmonica and piano, and also I've done a lot of work with two of Norway's finest classical organists, which was something which I don't know of many people who had tried that before, to use harmonica and pipe organ in duo. So I have been very fortunate, as I said, in mixing with the right people.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and on that, so you released an album in 2010 called Harm Organ, which is a harmonica organ. So this is a pipe organ, yeah, which is a sort of church organ. It's a

SPEAKER_03:

church organ, yeah, huge. I mean, it was sort of a... publicity thing from the record company they said the world's smallest and the world's largest instrument heard together

SPEAKER_02:

and there's a video of you playing um so i'll put it i'll put the link on and people can check it out but yeah it's a great interesting sound with that combination and How did you go about amplifying the small chromatic against the gigantic pipe organ?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, of course, that is very important to get the balance right. So whenever we play concerts, obviously, I use a good condenser microphone and make sure that the organist has a speaker near where he is so that he can hear me, because also the distances in the churches can be a problem with the delays and so forth. Well, that is something that with modern technology, it's possible to do it.

SPEAKER_02:

So great. So we started talking about your recording career now. So let's continue with that. So I think you touched on already, you clearly played some classical music. You played with orchestras a lot. So the Norwegian Radio Orchestra you've mentioned. You play kind of popular music. And another thing you've done a lot is to play sort of Norwegian and sort of folk music, which is great. I love it, the harmonica in these different settings. So tell us a little bit about playing the sort of Norwegian folk music on the chromatic.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, as I said, my father was an amateur musician. His brother, my uncle, Eivind Groven. He was one of Norway's foremost classical composers and also very knowledgeable about our traditional folk music. Both my father and Eivind, his brother, my uncle, played the traditional Norwegian folk instrument, the hardanger fiddle, which is like a violin, but it has four underlying strings, four sympathetic strings, which makes for a very full and resonant sound, quite different from ordinary violin. So I grew up with that. I never played violin myself, but it's been part of my upbringing. And my mother, she used to sing. She had a lovely soprano voice, and my brother was very much into music too. So That was part of my upbringing, as it were. With Norwegian music, obviously our great national composer, Edvard Grieg, has always been a favourite of mine. And like many of the composers of his generation in Europe, they based a lot of their music on folk music. If you look around, you can take Dvořák in Bohemia, in Czechoslovakia. You have Tchaikovsky, Brahms. Bartok in Hungary. All those great composers had this folk music inspiration. So that's a natural part of my musical background, as it were.

SPEAKER_02:

And you released an album, a Greek album in 2007, where you're doing interpretations with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. Yes, that's right.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And also, recently, these last few years, I've collaborated with the greatest fiddle player of his generation in Norway, Knut Buen. We made two albums together, first an instrumental with harmonica and hard range fiddle. I don't think it's been ever done before. It's a very unusual combination, but we found that it actually works. So we used a lot of traditional folk music for that, and then later we wrote a lot of songs together because he is... He's such a multi-talented artist, so he wrote some wonderful lyrics where he asked me whether I could make music. So I wrote melodies, and we had two singers. Was

SPEAKER_02:

that first

SPEAKER_03:

album The Sound of Telemark? The first album was The Sound of Telemark, which is an instrumental album. And the second one is called Kjenslevev, which actually means like a tapestry of emotion, which is mostly songs.

SPEAKER_01:

Kvar vårdlige vänder

SPEAKER_03:

And as I said, all those musicians like Iver Kleive, who I made the Harm Organ album with, and Ivar Anton Vågaard, who is one of Norway's most prominent pianists. We have worked together now for 35, almost 40 years. Working with people like that has been tremendous inspiration, and also another organist, Kåre Nordstoga, who plays on my Greek album. My recording career has also comprised a lot of popular music. A very fine Norwegian composer I've worked with a lot, called Henning Sommero. My recording of his most famous song called Vårdsøg, which means something like breath of spring or spring yearning. become almost like a standard in Norway. It was used as a signature tune for the most popular request program on Norwegian radio for years. So everybody knows it. So that's one of the pieces, the most requested pieces that I always include in my concerts. And the same composer Henning Sommro, he also wrote a wonderful concertino for Harmonica and Orchestra for me, which is now on the album of his works, which has just been nominated for a Fantastic. So we'll see what's going to happen there.

SPEAKER_02:

So this is The Borders album, released in 2023, yeah? That's right. Do you get a Grammy if that wins a Grammy, or is that just a Henning?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I think it's also the actual sound, the recording itself, because it's the man who also recorded our Harmorgan record. He's done a wonderful job of what they call immersive recording, where you actually feel that it's like surround stereo in a way. So I think if it wins the Grammy, which it is nominated for, it will be both for Morten Lindberg, who recorded it, and for Henning, who wrote the music, and for us performers. You know, there's Henning's violin concerto and a concerto also for hand flute and orchestra, and then the harmonica work. So we'll all share it, if it wins.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, a nomination is great in itself. Yeah, it is. And of course, you've done various... concertos for harmonica you've done the the the hi to Villa Loba Swan and and various other ones yeah so it's something obviously playing big orchestral pieces How do you approach that, playing that on the chromatic harmonica?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, again, it's the heritage of Tommy Riley. Tommy, Larry Adler, John Sebastian, those were the three players of that generation who actually got those works, actually inspired some of the great composers of the day to write serious concertos for harmonica. So I find it very rewarding to study and learn those pieces, obviously. they're quite demanding to play, so you really have to devote a lot of time and patience to learn them and to play them well. But I've been very fortunate in getting the opportunity to play these works with some very fine orchestras, not only here in Norway, but in other countries as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and talking of which, so I got here, I think, in 1990, you played at Carnegie Hall, and I think one of the few what harmonica plays to have a play at Carnegie Hall?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, that was obviously a big thing, you know. We did a tour in the US with two of my great musical associates, Ivar Anton Vogel, who I mentioned before, who's a wonderful pianist, and also Kjetil Bjerkestrand, who is one of the finest exponents of using modern keyboards, synthesizers and so forth. So we travelled across the US and We did Carnegie Hall. We did also concerts in San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C. So it was quite a strenuous tour. but obviously a great experience.

SPEAKER_02:

Was that the first time you toured in the US?

SPEAKER_03:

No, it wasn't. My first tour in the US was 1981, I think. And then I also did some... I became very friendly with a fantastic American conductor, Gordon Wright, who heard me here in Norway. He was then the professor and conductor in Alaska. So he invited me to play with him with... the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra in Alaska. That was 1983 or 4 or something, I think. And also the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra. And then I was invited by the conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Texas because he had heard me. I did a lot of work on cruise ships. I played concerts with my pianist on the ships. And you never know who's in the audience because after one of those cruise concerts I had an invitation from this quiet American who I remembered him because he'd come up to me after my cruise concert, thanked me for the concert, and he asked me for my address and phone number. And I never thought much about it until he contacted me and said, would you like to come and play with my orchestra in Dallas? So I played the Villa Lobos concerto and some of my own stuff and Gordon Jacobs' five pieces and so forth. I did a lot of work in America in the 80s and 90s and the early from the year 2000. Not so much recently because in one of my most exciting experiences during the last couple of decades has been all my concerts in Asia, in East Asia.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, it tells about those. Yeah, obviously you've been in Asia a lot. You played at the Asia Pacific Festival as well. Yeah, so you've spent a lot of time there as well, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

I have, yes. I think my first visit to Asia was 1995. when the World Harmonica Festival was held in Yokohama in Japan so I was invited to play a concert at the festival there and also to be an adjudicator in the competitions and the winner of the solo chromatic category was none other than Shima Kobayashi so that's when I first met Shima and after that of course she went to study with Tommy in England so that was my first time and in In Yokohama, I met many talented Asian players, and outstanding for me among them, apart from Shima, was the King's Harmonica Quintet from Hong Kong. Because what they did, they played chamber music on five harmonicas, almost like a string quartet, which was something quite staggering the way they did it. And we became great friends, and they invited me and Ivar Anton Vorgård, my pianist, to come to play with them in Hong Kong, which we did. 1998, I think it must have been. And also, I did a tour of Japan with Tommy's first Japanese student, Joe Sakimoto, who was Shima Kobayashi's first teacher. And then in 2001, I had a phone call from... the man who runs the record company I record for in Norway called Grappa. He said, we have to go to South Korea. And I said, what do you mean? Why? He said, because your album is now in the charts in South Korea. He had made a deal with a local Korean company to release some of my albums there. And they were so successful. So Helge Westby of Grappa and myself, we went to Korea in the year 2001 to promote my records there. And a few years later, I was invited to do a concert tour there, which... I did, and Ivar Anton and myself, we went practically every year up until the pandemic. From then on, it's been all different, of course, but we had some fantastic tours in South Korea. And one day after one of my concerts there, there was a young South Korean who came up and said, he thanked me for the concert, and he said, is it possible to have a lesson from you? I thought that, well, he seemed a very keen, enthusiastic and nice young man. So he came to my hotel room and I gave him a lesson. And from then on, every year I went there, he continued to study with me during my short stays in South Korea. And then he asked whether it would be possible to continue on a more permanent level. And this is Yoon Seok-li. Who applied to study at the Norwegian Academy of Music with me. And he did. And he did a super job. He was here for two years and did a super job as a player. And he's now a very successful professional player in South Korea. And not only South Korea. Right now I think he's in America.

UNKNOWN:

Music

SPEAKER_02:

fantastic great stuff yeah so you played all around the world amazing what the uh where the harmonica's taking you how do you reflect on that when you think about it i certainly do i

SPEAKER_03:

the harmonica has

SPEAKER_02:

been my

SPEAKER_03:

passport to the world

SPEAKER_02:

And so another album we'll just touch on before we move on is the Here, There and Everywhere album. Oh, yeah. Which works for harmonica and orchestra by Sir George Martin. Of course, lots of Lennon and Courtney Beatles songs. So tell us about that album.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, that was a big thrill for me to be able to make that album because George Martin, to cut a long story short, he started out as a record producer as a young man and one of his very first artists was Tommy Riley. Now we're going back to 1950. So they became, they were great friends. And after a long time, he came back to Tommy and wrote some wonderful works for Harmonica and Orchestra for Tommy. One of them, a short piece Tommy recorded in the, I think 1985 on his album Serenade. But the other work, Three American Sketches, Tommy played it a lot throughout Europe in concerts and on radio, but he actually never made a commercial And when Tommy, unfortunately, left us, passed away in the year 2000, I mean, I had made a great friendship with George Martin through Tommy, of course. I was very pleased when George said, would you be interested in recording my three American sketches so we can get it out on a commercial record? So obviously I was delighted. I recorded it with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. At that time, a young, very enterprising English conductor by the name of John Wilson, who I had met in London a few years before. Nowadays, of course, John Wilson is one of the hottest and most sought-after conductors in the world. He's a very prolific recording artist, and every year he does... a concert at the Proms at the Albert Hall, and I think his concert is the one which is sold out before anything else. So anyway, John came over to Oslo to conduct the Norwegian Radio Orchestra for me when I made the recording of George Martin's Three American Sketches, also his Dagietto.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_03:

and his arrangements of some London McCartney songs. So that was a big thrill.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, yeah, so we've talked through numerous of your albums and various things you've done. You've done lots of albums. I think you've got 36 albums released to your name, is that right? Yeah, something like that, I think, yeah. Yeah, so amazing recording career, and they say you've travelled all around the world.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_00:

Hey everybody, you're listening to Neil Warren's Harmonica Happy Hour podcast, proudly sponsored by Tom Halcheck and Blue Moon Harmonicas. This is Jason Ritchie here telling you I love Blue Moon Harmonicas. I love the combs, the covers, the custom harps, the refurbished pre-war marine bands, and nobody's easier to work with than Tom Halcheck. Check them out, www.bluemoonharmonicas.com.

SPEAKER_02:

You've also been involved in a Norwegian harmonica club, sort of equivalent, I think, is it to spawn? What was the harmonica uk club in the uk is that something you've been involved with

SPEAKER_03:

oh definitely yeah as a matter of fact this summer we it's going to be 40 years since we had the first harmonica workshop 1985 because by that time i mean tommy riley and myself we did a whole series of programs about the harmonica on norwegian television called munspil forum where we were teaching the harmonica were five programs. We had two students in the studio whom we were teaching. And from then on, there were so many players around Norway who kept contacting me by letter in those days. It was before internet, of course. And when I did my tours in Norway, I always had people come up to me and, you know, ask for lessons and so forth. And of course, Tommy was going back and forth to Norway all the time. So there was this idea from some of these very keen players that we should try to organize some kind of workshop. And in 1985, Tommy was invited to be a soloist at a big concert in a town two and a half hours north of Oslo to be featured as a soloist with the Norwegian Youth Symphony Orchestra playing the Spivakovsky Concerto. So some of these keen young Norwegian players, they said this could be a good opportunity to set up sort of like a seminar or a workshop with Tommy and me as the teachers. And we did. And that was the start. From then on, there's been every year during the summer, sometime June, July or August, we've had seminars. these workshops every year in different parts of Norway. And a very important part of the whole thing here is that, which we can probably get into later, the Norwegian harmonica maker Georg Polderstad, who makes the most fantastic chromatic harmonicas in the world. He was part of this group of players who wanted to learn more about the instrument. So in 1987, I think it was, The organization, which is called NMF, Norwegian Harmonica Forum, was started. Since then, every year we've had these summer workshops, summer seminars with concerts and teaching and a very happy atmosphere. And apart from all the Norwegian players, we've had guests coming from just about everywhere all over the world. We had a player from Australia come once. We've had people from Taiwan, Hong Kong. Korea, England, Germany, France, America. It's been very successful. And of course, there's been my best Norwegian student, Tore Reppe. He was the first Norwegian to actually major in the harmonica at the music academy near his hometown in Trondheim. In the 1980s, he had been studying with me for three or four years, and he went on to become world champion. He won the solo category chromatic in 1987 at the big festival in the island of Jersey in the British Channel, which was organized, as we all know, by Jimmy Hughes. Jimmy Hughes did a fantastic job there and put together a wonderful festival and a great competition.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I had to talk about that very festival with Jim on the first interview I did with him. So your 1987 festival was a real milestone, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, fantastic.

SPEAKER_02:

Fantastic. And you were there, of course.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, I was there. Oh! Everybody was there.

SPEAKER_01:

And I

SPEAKER_03:

think that was probably the finest jury they've ever had for any competition. Because in the jury, are you ready? Yeah. Tommy Riley, James Moody, Pete Peterson, Jerry Murad, and Helmut Herold.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

All great names

SPEAKER_02:

in the harmonica world. Some pressure to play in front of those.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So we're getting back to the Norwegian seminars. This summer, we're going to have our workshop this year in Elverum, where the very first workshop took place in 1985. So that's going to be a big, big thing.

SPEAKER_02:

Fantastic. Yeah. So you're also, I think, the harmonic professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, I was. They have this wonderful opportunity here at the academy that people who who play instruments which are not on the regular curriculum of the academy, like violin or piano or flute or something like that. They have a free, they call it frika, the free study for candidates who play different instruments like the harmonica. I think they accept about four students a year for that special category. So they have auditions, and of course my Korean students So obviously you've been heavily

SPEAKER_02:

involved with teaching. So a question I ask each time, Sigmund, if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend that 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_03:

Basic movements. which is the term basic movements is something which Tommy Riley uses in his, how should I say, basic tutor called Play Like the Stars, which was published by Honus in the early 50s, I think 1952 or something. Basic movements, he worked out all the different combinations of going from from one note to the other, from blow to draw, with and without the lever, and skipping holes in between, to do all those things, you know, to make sure that you can do all those movements effortlessly, and they shouldn't sound like hard work. Obviously, I mean, the word basic movements tells it all, because if you have practiced those evenly so that you can do them as easily as although there might be big jumps, you know, going from C in the first octave to A sharp, for instance, whole three with the lever in, you know. If you can do that as smoothly as going from E to G, you know, the two blow notes which are next to one another, then you really have the foundation of a good technique.

SPEAKER_02:

And so do you use corner switching yourself when you're doing some of these bigger leaps? Not really, no.

SPEAKER_03:

Basically, what I do, I use tongue blocking, and sometimes I play with the lips, you know, the first, the pucker method, particularly in the top octave, because I feel sometimes, it depends if I'm playing very fast passages in the top octave, the tongue can, it feels like it is in the way, you know, it's getting in the way. But I might do Not corner switching as such, but sometimes it will be easier to show you rather than talk about it. But if you, for instance, I will then switch from using the tongue to playing it as a single note. You know, if I go from A draw in the middle octave to A draw in the top octave, I will then switch from using just pursed lips to using the tongue to cover, because then it'll be a bit like tongue switching. I haven't developed that. I mean, it's for those people who have actually started with that from an early time in their playing, it can be great. It's too late for me to change now.

SPEAKER_02:

You survive without it. So did Tommy Riley not use corner switching? No. So it's not essential.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I mean, it's for those people who can master it. It can be very useful.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, definitely. Sure, yeah. So you mentioned the Paule concert harmonica that was developed there in Norway. So that's something that you play. So tell us about that one. And when did you start playing that chromatic?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, Georg was one of the people who had been watching the harmonica series that I mentioned before, which we did on television in Norway in 1970. So he was one of the people who had been writing to me about the different things to do with harmonica. I think it was 1980, I came to play at a concert hall very close to where he lived. So he came to my concert, and then that was the first time I met him. He came up afterwards, and he said... Can I have a look at your harmonica? And of course, at that time, I was playing the Silver Concerto, the Horner, which I showed him. He said, how much does it cost? And I told him at that time, I can't remember the exact price, but he said, oh, that's very expensive. And he said, would it be possible to have a look inside it? I could see that he was not just somebody with some funny ideas. He was a very sort of very serious and very polite person. And he had been writing to me, so I knew that he was very interested. So I took the instrument apart and he said, hmm, very interesting. He said, I think I could make one like that. And he did. When I came back to his part of the country a year later to play a concert, he said, I've made this instrument, would you like to have a look at it? And I did, and I tried it, and it was marvellous. He had made it out of, the body was pewter, and the cover plates were silver. Because he said, if it was... I didn't want to spend all that much money on silver and find that it wouldn't be any good. So I played a couple of pieces on it in my concert, and the next day all the reporters and the television people, they all came to do a piece about this instrument, and I ordered one from Georg. So a few months later he came and delivered it personally, And I showed it to Tommy, who was also very impressed. He ordered one. So that was the start of it. This was 1982 now, I think, 1982.

SPEAKER_02:

This was a hand-built chromatic, but from one person, hand-built, obviously not mass-manufactured.

SPEAKER_03:

No, no, no. And of course, I must put you in the picture here, because Georg Polluster, he is an industrial designer, he is an engineer. an inventor, and he's a very keen harmonica player, quite a good player himself. So he had the right background to do this. He kept developing and improving on his first instrument over the years. So it took about almost about 10 years. In the early 90s, then he had really come up with the prototype model, all silver, of course. which he then made one for Tommy and one for myself. And that was, from then on, I've only played the Polle instrument.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and of course, Shima got one not too long ago too, so she went across to Norway to collect it. That's right. So they're still available and still being made if people are interested in buying one.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, Georg Pollestad, It's not a young man anymore, so it's now into his final edition. So this is the last chance, really.

SPEAKER_02:

Last chance, yes, absolutely. But obviously recommended by yourself, so I'm sure it's a very fine instrument. Very fine. So do you play any other types of harmonica at all? Is it just the chromatic? Just the chromatic. And is it a 12-hole you're playing, or do you play 16?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, it's a 12-hole. But what sometimes, especially for recordings, I've done a lot of recording sessions, not just for my own recordings, but for other artists as well, and I've done a lot of film music, which I've been writing. So I have sometimes been using the bass harmonica in those contexts, and also I would then call it the tenor harmonica, which is really like a 280, you know, using the lower octave. But on the three-octave body... and get tenor plates, reed plates, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

That 12-hole size is what you know, right? So have you ever tried the 16-hole, or are you just happy with that 12-hole form factor?

SPEAKER_03:

I'm very happy with the 12-hole, but I can tell you that my very first chromatic, which my father bought for me when I was 10 years old, That was a 16-hole. But I find that the 12-hole is the right size because it fits in your hands. The 16-hole, it's very difficult to, because I use my hands a lot to shaping the sound, the volume and the tone colors and the 40s and so forth. So that's why I've always stuck to the regular 12-hole. But sometimes, as I said, if I need the lower octave, I will then use tenor plates.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And do you ever play any keys beside the key of C? Very rarely.

SPEAKER_03:

There's a funny story because a very good friend of mine, this was about 1982. great composer and one of the world's most famous jazz guitarists, Terje Riptal. He had been talking about it sometime. He said, I should like to write something for you because he played the harmonica a little bit. So one day he rang me and he said, I've just written a big harmonica work for you. And I said, fantastic. So he started to play something on the piano on the telephone. And I said, I'm sorry, Terje, this is below the range because it was down to G, you know, below middle C. I said, can you transpose it? And he said, no, because the whole atmosphere, the mood of that piece was very dark, you know. And he wrote it for strings and alto flute and, you know, all the dark instruments in the woodwind and brass section. So what I did, I said, okay, I'll play it on the G harmonica. And it's on my record called Philharmonica, where I also have the Villalobos concerto and other things. It's called Modulations by Thierry Riptal. And that's played on the g harmonica

SPEAKER_02:

we touched on this a little bit earlier on but what about you amplifying yourself what microphone do you like to use i like to use

SPEAKER_03:

a good condenser mic and there are so many good ones akg sure I mean, the choice of microphones these days is fantastic. But I like to use simply a good condenser mic on a stand and with a distance of 20 or 30 centimetres, something like that, because I use my hands, as I mentioned before, to make tone colours and different pianos on 40s and so forth.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's very interesting because obviously Toots Tillmans held the microphone. So it's a very different approach, isn't it,

SPEAKER_03:

It is. I mean, Toots, I've always admired his playing. I think he was a genius. I mean, he was, as a jazz player, unsurpassed even today. I mean, although there are some very fine young jazz players these days. But Toots, the way he did it, it came out absolutely fantastic. But for his style, nobody can criticize that. I mean, it's incredible. Do you ever use

SPEAKER_02:

amplifiers or are you always going through PA or...?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I always have a monitor on the stage, you know, if I play with orchestras or, for instance, when I play concerts, church concerts, if the organ is up on the balcony, it might be 40 meters away, you know. So the organist has to have a monitor where he is, and I also have a monitor where I can have the organ, otherwise you get the delay. It's very difficult to play together. i mean generally these days i mean when you go around concert halls the sound systems now are really super mostly

SPEAKER_02:

and obviously orchestras are generally played acoustically so are you you're using a microphone to be heard with the orchestra oh

SPEAKER_03:

yeah

SPEAKER_02:

yeah so obviously that's pretty critical otherwise you won't be heard against the orchestra yeah no no no

SPEAKER_03:

although i mean some of the Some of the works, I mean, like somebody like James Moody, who wrote so many wonderful works for harmonica. He was very conscious of the balance thing when he wrote his big works for harmonica and orchestra. But I always use, I find it's a mistake not to.

SPEAKER_02:

What about any effects at all, any reverb or anything like that?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, it depends on the concert hall. Slight reverb can be very, very useful and tasteful. It has to be only just a little bit to give a bit of air.

SPEAKER_02:

Final question then, Sigmund, just about any future plans you've got coming up. What's happening in 2025 for you?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, many different things. I'm going to... There's a very good friend of mine, composer friend of mine, who's asked me to play some of his pieces on a triple album of his works, where he has different instrumentalists playing some of his songs. So that's something that we'll be doing in February, I think, with one of my great pianist friends. And then I'm playing an orchestral concert with the Christian Science Symphony Orchestra in the south of Norway in May. And I've got some church concerts lined up again, both with Iver Kleive, who plays on her organ, and with Kåre Nordstoga, who has been a resident organist at the Oslo Cathedral. He's just retired at the age of 70, but we'll be playing quite a few concerts this year. Then I'm off to Germany for the World Harmonica Festival.

SPEAKER_02:

So if you don't mind me saying, Sigmund, you're 78 years young, is that correct? That's right. So you're still going strong, you're still playing this year, you've still got that love for it and you're an inspiration to us all, still playing and showing we can still do it until these later years, yeah?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, yeah, I think I count myself very lucky, I'm blessed, I'm very grateful for being in good health, which... obviously, is something which is essential if you're going to have an active life as a performer.

SPEAKER_02:

So thanks so much for joining me today, Sigmund Grove, and it's been great to hear about all your amazing long career and all the amazing things you've done. Thank you. Thank you very much, Neil. Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas. What a long and distinguished career Sigmund has enjoyed, and he's still going strong. Thanks again to Roger Trowbridge for his invaluable support in putting together this episode. I'll sign out now with another clip of Sigmund playing the Harmonica Contatino on the Grammy-nominated album Borders, with the title in English being Solstice.