Lars Hollmer

Lars Gustav Gabriel Hollmer (21 July 1948 – 25 December 2008) was a Swedish accordionist, keyboardist and composer, whose work drew on music ranging from Nordic folk tunes to progressive rock. He has been a member and/or founder of over half a dozen groups, most of whose work has been recorded at The Chickenhouse, his well outfitted home studio in his hometown of Uppsala. His work with the band Samla Mammas Manna, in the late 1960s and early 1970s and up to 2002, when the re-formed group played at the two-day ProgDay festival in North Carolina, was and is considered progressive rock. However, he is most centrally an empathetic and generous collaborator: whether as a member of Accordion Tribe, while working with the experimental guitarist Fred Frith, or while spending several months with Japanese jazz players, he seems to find a style that brings his partners to the fore while remaining identifiably himself. Though his work is little known in the United States, he won a Swedish Grammis award in 1999 for his record Andetag. He has also composed extensively for Swedish film, as well as for theatre and dance productions. Consistent elements of his music throughout his career included use of irregular time signatures (often changing several times within a piece), a daring sense of improvisation (particularly vocal improvisation that utilized nonsense syllables), and used complex polyrhythms. Hollmer died in December 2008 of cancer, aged 60. He is buried in Berthåga Cemetery in Uppsala.

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