• Ville Syri (Ville & Tommie, Heinä Hø) – fiddle
• Gusten Brodin (band) – fiddle

Ville Syri is a Swedish-Finnish violinist originally from Gävle but based in Malmö. Ville’s home repertoire is in Gästrikland music and in the Swedish-Finnish and Finnish music that he grew up with.

Gusten Brodin is a folk musician with different types of violins as his main instrument, but also plays the cello and organ. He is educated at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and the Norwegian Academy of Music, among other things, and is a Riksspelman in Småland folk music.

During the course, Ville will guide you through some simple tunes from Gästrikland and Joel Rådberg’s notebook. The focus is on embellishments and via some tricky tunes where the focus is on finding the musicality in the “difficult”. With Gusten, you can expect tunes and styles mainly from the Småland music tradition. Both the musical material itself and how to play will be covered. Some topics that may appear are flow, phrasing, dance-ability and how to make playing interesting both for yourself and for the listener.

• Ronja Grafström (TRE, Vingalöf) – sång och fiol

Folk singer, musician and teacher Ronja Grafström comes from Sundsvall in Medelpad but now lives in Småland where she works as a singing teacher at Ljungby Cultural School and freelances with various bands, projects and assignments in Europe and the surrounding area. Rhythmic precision, ingenious lyrics and a balance between finesse and fulness are Ronja’s guiding stars through the music she performs. With or without words, her clear, raw and accurate voice contributes to everything from graceful chorales to blood-curdling ballads. On a course with Ronja as leader, you as a participant can expect many breaks in the first part, musical mischief and the occasional drinking song.

During Virrvarr 2025, Ronja is responsible for the course in folk singing that focuses on Virrvarr’s theme Music that travels. Together you will explore songs that center around travel of various kinds such as emigrant songs, sailor songs and navvy songs. In addition, Ronja brings with her musical elements that she herself has encountered on her own journeys from, to and between music and people.

More information: www.ronjagrafstrom.se

• Timmy Gasslander (TRE, Vingalöf & Tim & Jonnic) – guitar and mandolin
• Tommie Black-Roff (Ville and Tomme, Värivarjo & Teyr) – accordion

Timmy is a guitarist and music teacher from Småland. He works partly as a music teacher in primary schools while also touring and working mainly around Europe as a musician in, among others, the trio TRE, the duo Vingalöf and the duo Tim & Joinnic. Timmy’s unique playing style can be heard in how he carefully works with the guitar’s strengths and weaknesses to find ways to achieve the desired timbre, phrase structure or ornamental effects.

Tommie is a musician and composer who grew up in Cornwall in the southwest of the UK. Already at a young age he became familiar with the local Cornish folk music, classical music and church music. After a short time as a music ethnologist, he moved to the Nordic countries in 2017 as a member of the NoFo group Farandi. Tommie is also a passionate educator and leads, among other things, Crean Folk Camp in Cornwall every summer.

In the Arranging & Improvisation course at Virrvarr 2025, you will join Timmy and Tommie as we explore new tools for both melodic and harmonic improvisation that they have brought with them from their years as professional folk musicians. We will work in detail with accompaniment and improvisation to folk dance melodies linked to this year’s theme Music that Travels as we experiment with, among other things, harmonic variation, melodic improvisation and music-for-dance.

More information: timmygasslander.se & tommieroff.co.uk

• Klara Andersson (VAK, Agnes & Klara) – dance

The dance course during Virrvarr 2025 will offer a couple of different dances. We will start with one or two Swedish couple dances, where we will focus on musicality and clarity in our own dance and in the leading and following roles. After joint exercises, the group will have the opportunity to share impressions. During the course, Klara will also offer a little taste of dances that have traveled with her from various places in Europe where she has visited courses, festivals and events over the past ten years.

Klara Andersson is a dance teacher and dancer living in Malmö, with roots outside Sundsvall. She was educated at the Eric Sahlström Institute and the Stockholm University of the Arts and has worked as a dance teacher in recent years and at the same time explored the artistic forms of folk dance on stage, including together with the group VAK. One of her interests in dancing is to balance between pedagogical issues and tasks and at the same time be close to the core of social dance of playfulness and improvisation, where the musicality of the body is central.

More info: instragram.com/klaraanderssondance