Frida Matsdotter

Who is Frida Matsdotter?

Frida Matsdotter is a Swedish composer and musician, whose music, according to herself, can be described as a mixture of modern jazz, Swedish folk music and pop music - "ethnojazzpop". She has attended the Sjövik folk university in Dalecarlia, Sweden, as well as the Institute for Musicology at the University of Uppsala.

In 1998 she was awarded the Gunnar Wennerberg Travel Scholarship, which enabled her to study composition and improvisation in Lake Placid, New York, USA, under the guidance of, among others, Bob Brookmeyer, Jim McNeely, Kenny Werner, Rufus Reid, Dave Liebman and Jane Ira Bloom. Frida Matsdotter has also been awarded the Scholarship for Culture by Norrtälje community, SAMI's scholarship for development of repertoire, the Scholarship for Composition by the Swedish Board of Artists, Scholarship for a Commission by the same authority and the Culture Scholarship of the Swedish Builders' Union.

In 2000 she released her CD Tivoli on Phono Suecia, the label of STIM. The material is her own, though she did get some help with the translation into Icelandic for one of the tracks. On the cover of the CD Jan Strand says: Frida Matsdotter's music and lyrics draw together all the magical and giddy experiences of an amusement park and this world now lies open for all listeners to discover and explore. Frida grew up on the island of Björkö in the northern part of the Stockholm archipelago.