Lillebjørn Nilsen (1950-2024)

For the last week or so I've been revisiting Lillebjørn Nilsen and Andy Irvine's Live in Telemark CD, which I bought soon after it first came out in 2021 (original post here). I was enjoying it enough (again) to look up Lillebjørn Nilsen and see what he was up to these days, and now I find that not only is he dead, but that he died more than a year ago and that the news somehow escaped my notice. (So much for instant news and social media!)

Nilsen was a beloved and important figure in his native Norway, but he wasn't widely known outside of Scandinavia, so I can't really be surprised that virtually no English-language sources seem to have carried the news of his death. One exception is the NewsinEnglish.no website, which has a full obituary. Nilsen did have American connections, though; he apparently spent some time in Chicago, and memorialized it in this song, which (according to the Live in Telemark liner notes) is about a chance meeting in a pub with a fellow expatriate, a Norwegian au pair.

Nilsen was a fine singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. The Telemark concert with Andy Irvine was recorded in August 1994, and although Andy mentions having been very nervous, the performance captures their joy and comradeship as musicians whose backgrounds were different but whose temperaments and talents were congenial and complementary. Nilsen apparently stopped recording new material around that time, though he remained somewhat active. His health had reportedly declined in the years before his death.

Live in Telemark can be ordered, in digital and CD versions, from Bandcamp. There is a brief documentary tribute to Nilsen (in Norwegian) here.

Live in Telemark

I'm not sure why this genial live recording stayed on ice for twenty-seven years — maybe the timing just wasn't right until now — but here it is. Live in Telemark preserves a joint performance by two respected folk veterans in Norway in 1994. Andy Irvine is presumably the better-known of the pair internationally, having been a founding member of Sweeney's Men, Planxty, and several other notable Irish and world music ensembles in addition to his long solo career. Lillebjørn Nilsen is a comparable figure but one who performs mostly in the smaller market of his native Norway. Both are superb singers and accomplished multi-instrumentalists, and both have strong roots in folk traditions, Irvine as (among other things) a professed disciple of Woody Guthrie and Nilsen as a friend and admirer of Pete Seeger.

According to the liner notes, Irvine and Nilsen had known each other for about seventeen years before they finally had a chance to share a stage at the Telemark Festival. The set list here is roughly evenly divided between their respective repertoires, with Andy taking the spotlight for original songs like "My Heart's Tonight in Ireland" and "A Prince Among Men" and Lillebjørn contributing his own "Jenta i Chicago" and "Alexander Kiellands Plass." There are also several traditional songs as well as curiosities like a Norwegian version of Grit Larsen's "The Photographers," which Nilsen learned, in its original language from Seeger. A few of the cuts seem to be performed solo, but on most the pair play together, demonstrating a ready ability to learn each other's arrangements after what was presumably a relatively short period of rehearsal. Irvine mostly plays mandola and bouzouki while Nilsen plays guitar, willow flute, and hardanger fiddle. The sound is terrific.

Live in Telemark can be ordered, in digital and CD versions, from Bandcamp.