Violin Virtuosos

Thank you for participating in our Jazz Appreciation Month Listener Poll…today we celebrate the violin. Be sure to tune in to hear your favorite fiddlers, including Svend Asmussen.

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Known as “The Fiddling Viking,” jazz violinist Svend Asmussen has enjoyed a career spanning eight decades. He celebrated his 100^th birthday on Feb. 28, 2016 with the release of a 5 CD and DVD box set, the music capturing almost a century of jazz!

Asmussen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1916 to a musical family. He began violin lessons at age seven but left his formal studies behind at the age of 17 to start performing professionally as a violinist, vibraphonist and singer. In his early years, he worked cruise ships with other traveling performers like Josephine Baker, The Mills Brothers and Fats Waller. In the late 1930s he was becoming all the rage in Europe, performing regularly in Hamburg, London and Paris, but, unfortunately, Hitler hated jazz. Tours were halted, concerts stopped and the music went underground, becoming a form of political protest. Jazz became illicit, dangerous and clandestine, adding to its cutting-edge mystique.

When the war ended and the music resumed, Asmussen chose to center his career in Denmark instead of relocating to the U.S. He even turned down several invitations to join Benny Goodman’s band. Even still, he managed to work with the likes of Duke Ellington, and Lionel Hampton and began building an international reputation. He formed a popular Scandinavian trio in the late 1950s, which toured the world, and he also popped up at the 1967 Monterey Jazz Festival’s Violin Summit but, for the most part, the violin virtuoso chose to stay closer to home.

Over the years he’s released such popular albums as “Fiddler Supreme,” “Fit as a Fiddle,”  “Still Fiddling,”  and “Svining with Svend,” and he also dabbled in Danish movies, including an appearance in Pippi Longstocking in 1949. He’s done commercials and voiceover work, starring in several animated feature films. In 2003, his life was celebrated in a 3-hour special television broadcast that aired throughout Europe and his biography, “June Nights: Svend Asmussen’s Life in Music” was a bestseller.

Today a collection of his jazz music, photos, posters and memorabilia is housed at the University Library of Southern Denmark. Another legacy? Son Claus is a successful guitarist in Denmark.

A century of fiddling. A century of swing jazz. An eyewitness to 100 years of history, with a violin as partner.  Svend Asmussen’s remarkable life is still unfolding but there is no doubt that his status as “The Fiddling Viking” is forever secured.