Robert “Robi” Svärd- Flerfaldigt prisbelönt gitarrist och kompositör numer bosatt i Göteborg tillsammans med sin sambo Ann Sehlstedt.

Mattias Franzéns (STIM:s Promotionsnämnd) motivering då Robi tilldelades priset som ”STIM Årets Kompositör 2019”:

”En erkänt skicklig instrumentalist men också en stilsäker och virtuos kompositör med lika stor respekt för traditionen som han är en finurlig förnyare.

Hans imponerande fingerfärdighet och känsla lägger grund för ett behagligt flyt i de komplexa kompositionerna.

Han har fått genrens giganter att tappa hakan- att som svensk komma från ingenstans och slå igenom i det erkänt kräsna och kvalitétsmedvetna flamenco- Spanien är en närmast osannolik bedrift”

Det var kärlek vid första ögonkastet och redan som fyra-åring bemästrade han hela sin fars Beatlesrepertoar. Robi har fått sin utbildning i Australien vid Sydney Conservatorium Of Music och under denna period (1996) nominerades som en av tre i hela landet till ABC Young Achievers Award.

Han var ett välbekant ansikte vid de flesta stora gitarrtävlingarna där han under många år prenumererade på topplaceringar som resulterade i rikstäckande turnéer som bl.a tog honom hela vägen till The Sydney Opera House där han gav en mycket uppskattad och omtalad solokonsert. Efter nästan 10 år i Australien bosatte Robi sig i Sevilla och startade sin flamencokarriär. Han blev tidigt uppskattad för sitt melodiösa och rytmiska spel och befann sig snart på turnéer med en av de mest populära grupperna från Sevilla. Karriären har sedan fortsatt då han 2002 flyttade tillbaka till Sverige och kulminerade 2016 vid släppet av hans solo-debutskiva “Pa’ki Pa’ka”. Att det skulle bli en fin skiva tvivlade aldrig någon på, men gensvaret från etablissemanget i Spanien och den stora internationella publiken- det var INGEN beredd på. Hur kunde en svensk (nåja) flamencogitarrist erövra så många lyssnare runt om i världen på detta sätt? Denna fråga ställde sig många och tillslut nådde ryktena ända till BBC som skickade ett team till Sverige för att ta reda på denna osannolika story.

Sedan dess har Robi gått från klarhet till klarhet och spelat in ytterligare två soloalbum ”Alquimia” (2018) och ”Del alma” (2022) På dessa album hör man många stora namn inom genren såsom Antonio Vargas ”El Potito”, Niño Josele, Sandra Carrasco och många andra. Pa´ki Pa´ka och Alquimia belönades med Songlines UK’s dekal ”Top of the world album” och Robi hoppas nu att även Del alma ska få denna åtråvärda utmärkelse i år.

Robi’s gitarr och kompositioner hörs även på flera andra artisters album som t.ex  Graná (Sergio ”El Colorao”), Borracho de arte (Antonio ”El Turry”) och Al Sereno (Estrella Fernández) och flera andra tongivande flamencoartister från mestadels Granada. Alla dessa samarbeten bidrog till att Robi blev inbjuden att spela en bejublad konsert på mytomspunna Club Eshavira i Granada 2022.

Back

Ann Sehlstedt

Ann Sehlstedt ”La Pantera” kom i relativt unga år i kontakt med flamencon som kom att bli hennes följeslagare!

1997 blev hon tillfrågad att representera Sverige i en mediaföreställning i Madrid vars frontfigur för projektet var den då omsusade Joaquín Cortés och detta var något som blev den avgörande pushen till hennes yrkesval att bli flamencodansare. Efter Danshögskolans 3-åriga pedagogutbildning med spansk dans som huvudämne flyttade hon till Sevilla där hon vidareutbildade sig vid Fundación Christina Heeren´s proffsutbildning.

Sedan dess har hon varit yrkesverksam flamencodansare, - koreograf och -pedagog och firar hösten -22 20 årsjubileum! Under åren har hon hunnit med en mängd olika produktioner, både egna såväl som dansare i andras, inbjuden att dansa med kompaniet Nuevo Ballet Español, tävlat med Compañía Kaari Martin i Certamen de Madrid (med en hedrande tredjeplacering) varit projektanställd på operan i Oslo under deras uppsättning av operaklassikern Carmen och sedan 2010 driver hon sitt Centro de Flamenco i Göteborg. Hon arbetar för närvarande, utöver att ge klasser i Göteborg och Stockholm, huvudsakligen med nya föreställningen Entre Dos tillsammans med Robert Svärd samt är en del av ensemblen Robi Svärd & co tillsammans med spanska gästartister och de spelade nyligen på det mytomspunna Eshavira Club i Granada.

Namnet ”La Pantera” började hon kallas efter det att gitarristen Jeronimo Maya såg henne dansa och sa att hon rörde sig som en panter och namnet dröjde sig sedan kvar.

Back

Emil Pernblad

Emil's path to the flamenco guitar has been anything but straightforward - he started playing the piano at the age of six, almost ten years later he was often found behind a drum set, later it was the electric guitar that led to classical guitar and 25 years ago flamenco found him.

Today he is basically a flamenco guitarist, and after many years of training in Spain, he is active as a freelance musician with a large geographical field of work. In both the flamenco home region and on tour, he has played with several of the genre's big stars. In search of new ways of expression, he sometimes chooses to go far from the Spanish tones and often hear Arabic, Celtic, Latin American, Russian or Swedish music streaming from his guitar. He has been touring extensively with widely differing groups, ever since the first tours in Ireland with Celtic Conections in the late 80's to Scotland tour with the Roma-Russian group Krilja 2013 and the Argentina tour 2014 with the singer Rebecka Gabriel. The same year he presented the album "De Noche" together with the singer Marianne Holmboe with music and lyrics by Emil.

Emil has composed music for theater and television, and also works as a guitar teacher.

Back

Afra Rubino

Afra’s music is a mashup of classic flamenco, Latin American rhythms, and original pieces. In Andalusia she studied with Spanish guitar masters and taught and toured for several years. In 2012, she was included in the Spanish documentary “Tocaoras” as one of the few foreign female flamenco guitarists and in 2017 she was one of five female guitarists who portrayed in a large reportage in the Spanish magazine El País under the name “Ellas dan el toque” (“The women tackling the macho world of flamenco guitar”, in the English version). She has opened for flamenco guitar legend Vicente Amigo and toured with Spain’s premier female flamenco guitarist Antonia Jiménez. In 2018, she performed at flamenco festivals in Spain together with percussionist Nasrine Rahmani and collaborated on this occasion also with flamenco legend Paco de Lucia’s harmonica player Antonio Serrano and Spain’s most sought-after double bass player, Javier Colina.

Since 2016, she has repeatedly worked with her project “The Double Bass Project”, together with the Swedish double bass player Peter Janson and singer Helena Ek and has during 2018 toured regularly with Swedish flamenco guitarist Robert “Robi” Swärd.

In December 2017, she was awarded the STIM scholarship (Swedish Composer’s International Music Bureau Composition Scholarship).

In 2016 she was awarded the “Guitar People’s Prize” under the category “Up and coming”, where she was nominated by classical guitarist Göran Söllscher.

Back

Phyllis Akinyi

Phyllis Akinyi (she/her) is a Danish-Kenyan dancer, choreographer, performance artist, and dance researcher. Akinyi started studying flamenco in 2004 in her native Copenhagen, before moving to Madrid to further her studies at the prestigious flamenco academy Amor de Dios in 2007. She has since become a sought after flamenco performer, speaker and teacher, and divides her time between Northern Europe and Spain.

Akinyi has taught at Amor de Dios, Cullberg Balletten (SE), the BA in Dance and Choreography at UniArts Stockholm, Dansehallerne (DK), Conde Duque (Madrid), and more, focusing her teachings on investigation, exploration and grounding through her Flamenco Lab Sessions.

She works with traditional and experimental flamenco and has spent the last five years developing artistic works that highlight African and Diasporan expressions within flamenco. Her general artistic practice investigates the ‘betwixt and between’, or more specifically; the entanglements of movement, culture, and identity, from an anthropological lens of bodies caught in cultural ‘in-betweens’. Akinyi is the founder and artistic director of Compañía Afromenco, under which she developed the works ’Sonar Siguiriya’ (2017), ‘FlamencÁfrica, (2018) ‘Nyar Kakan - I Contain Multitudes’ (2019) and ‘GASP’ (2020) together with percussionist Stephan Jarl (SE).

Her latest piece G.R.I.E.F. is a durational exploration of emotional release and spiritual trance through flamenco rhythms, which premiered at Yellow Fish Festival in New York in May 2021. G.R.I.E.F. will continue to explore unusual places internally and externally in Europe and the US in 2023/24. Currently Akinyi is choreographing ‘Havets Skum’ for KORA in collaboration with Dansehallerne (spring 2022), as well as AL.I.CE; a solo piece commissioned by choreographer and curator Julienne Doko for the performance installation JOURNEYS. She will also be presenting two durational performance works this summer, one in collaboration with multi-disciplinary artists Vala T. Foltyn and Sall Lam Toro in Nuremberg, Germany, and the other a solo work commissioned by Metropolis - Copenhagen International Theatre.

She has been featured on several panels, amongst others at the 2021 Flamenco Festival Albuquerque History and Research Symposium, and will travel to Chicago in October 2022 to talk at the Women in Dance Leadership Conference, as well as featured in several articles, the latest being published in Dance Magazine (USA) in May 2022, written by legendary dance theorist Dr. Brenda Dixon-Gottschild.

www.phyllisakinyi.com 

Back

Irene Pelayo & Olle Pelayo

¡Ay, Tarara!,  a flamenco duo based in Malmö, Sweden. Olle (guitarist and harmonica player) and Irene Pelayo Lind (singer) are known for a fresh flamenco sound that fuses traditional palos (flamenco music styles) with influences of Swedish and Spanish folk music, as well as verses by great Spanish poets like Lorca and lyrics of their own. The name of the band is taken from la Tarara, a well-known female character from the traditional Spanish folk music and culture. 

Back

Andrée Petersen & Pepita Rohde

Andrée Petersen and Pepita Rohde first got acquainted in the early nineties due to their various activities in the Copenhagen Flamenco Association El Duende. They always respected and appreciated each other's artistic work.

In the spring of 2014 they started a collaboration that quickly developed into an intense joint journey into the many emotional depths of the guitar, song, dance and life itself. Thus two kindred spirits finally were united within the infinitely large universe of the flamenco.

The duo is dedicated to spreading the knowledge of the traditional flamenco in its purest form, performed by only a singer and a guitarist.

Back

Thierry Boisdon fell for flamenco in France in 1982. A Danish woman he met in Spain in 1987 brought him to Copenhagen. The performances took off in the 90s, where he established himself solidly in Scandinavia, and toured in more than 15 countries with, among others, Granhøj Dans, Erik Steen Flamenco Fusion, Kaari Martin or Duo Resonante. In 2002, Thierry founded Arte Flamenco, which produces and organizes performances, concerts at schools, regional venues and festivals.

He has just released a flamenco CD "Gotitas íntimas" recorded with musicians from Seville.

Back

Gustavo Rey has been part of the danish and swedish flamenco scene from the nineties, where he studied flamenco singing with Lorenzo ’El Ripoll’ Galvez, Juan del Gastor, Enrique el Extremeño, Rogelio de Badajoz and Raphael Molina. During the last 30 years Gustavo Rey has been singing in a variety of flamenco performances and shows in Denmark and Sweden (Evolución, Al-Andaluz, Flamenco-i.dk, Månen og Maskinen (The Moon and the Machine) and Señorita Julia, and has also partaken as singer in crossover performances and shows such as Oum and Oriental Cut. He has been collaborating with the best flamenco artists in all of Scandinavia (La familia Andrades, Henrik Liebgot (guitar), Mariana Ortega (dance), Erik Steen (guitar), Poul Jacek Knudsen (guitar), Pia del Norte (dance) and many more). Recently Gustavo Rey has been touring with flamenco artists Laksmi ’La Chimi’ Basile (dancer) and Juan Murube (singer) and has performed numerous times with dancer Rebeca Ortega also from Sevilla.

Back