Trio THG - Tungen ud ad Vinduet (Go’ Danish Folk Music)

It’s easy to get a little smug about Canada’s comparatively enlightened social and cultural policies when you’re watching the US vigourously debate whether or not to include a meagre $50 million for the arts within an $800 billion stimulus package.  To do penance for that feeling of self-righteousness, I like to read about Swedish parental leave benefits and the lengths to which the Danes go to foster their folk music traditions.  Trio THG (Tophøj, Hockings & Graubæk) are an impressive product of that nurturing.  These young, thoroughly energetic, musicians are graduates of the Carl Neilsen Academy of Music in Odense, where they studied their national folk traditions in a formal academic setting that is without an equivalent in Canada.  This recording reveals artists who are clearly schooled in the tradition, without being unduly constrained by it.  Trio THG explore both traditional repertoire and their own compositions and, like the best of their Canadian peers (such as The McDades or Genticorum), they are skilled disciples of their musical roots – reverential but not deferential to the tradition.