This is the second common Helene Blum & Harald Haugaard album after many individual album releases. We have gathered a lot of material over the last three years. Here you will find a small selection of our work. Songs, tunes and stories from Denmark and around. DEN STORE SOMMER is about the summer – both figurative and as metaphor. DEN STORE SOMMER contains a lullaby, a love song in a garden, a medival Danish ballad, a fairytale, an homage to a destigvished winemaker from Pfalz, songs and tunes about hope, faith and light, commissions and an almost forgotten lullaby written by the great Danish composer Carl Nielsen. Much of the material is inspired by a certain period of time in Danish arts history; DET FOLKELIGE GENNEMBRUD (The popular breakthrough) app 1900-1920 with painters, composers, writers and sculptresses such as Carl Nielsen and Anne-Marie Carl Nielsen, Anna & Fritz Syberg, Johannes V. Jensen and many more. Artists who came them self from the common life at the countryside, reflecteded everyday life as well as the big lines in arts and life. Artists for whom it was important that women and men had equal rights, possibilities, fees, etc.

DEN STORE SOMMER also reflects that Blum, Haugaard and their terrific band constantly visit different areas in music playing with symphony orchestras, various soloists, playing concerts on smaller and bigger stages and seeking the boarders from ur alte traditional music to modern experimental sound under the big umbrella we call folk music. It’s recorded in the legendary Medley studios in Copenhagen, and produced together with Søren Mikkelsen and our band. For us the joy and laughter, the dancing goes closely together with the melancholy and darkness. For life and in music. Enjoy.