MEMBER EVENT | Ole Bull and the Travelling Artists

This is a special event for Encourager and Protector members of the Exhale. We are delighted to welcome Malene Sheppard Skærved and Peter Sheppard Skærved to discuss their memoir ‘Passages Homewards’.

Malene and Peter Sheppard Skærved explore the work of the travelling performers and writers of the 19^th century. Their recently completed memoir ‘Passages Homewards’ traces their own, accidental journeys, in Scandinavia and the USA, in the footsteps of the greatest Nordic violinist of the age, Ole Bull. Bull was close friends with, and inspiration to Hans Christian Andersen, Lola Montez, Henry Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and George Sand: their meetings and storytelling can shed light on many our lives today. Peter and Malene will talk about their shared work and research, and their excitement and passion for uncovering the lesser-known stories of our forbears, and the inspiration that can come from exploring the lives of itinerant artists of the past. Malene was born in Denmark, and moved to the USA in her mid-teens. Her work as a writer is wide-ranging: she has published a critically acclaimed biography of Marlene Dietrich, her dramatic collaborations with composers (as librettist) have been performed on both sides of the Atlantic and recorded for Toccata Classics. As a poet, she has written large scale, site-specific work, and she is completing a series of modern ‘Eventyrer’, or adult fables. Malene teaches writing at Goldsmiths University. East-London born and raised, Peter is a Grammy-nominated soloist, with, currently ninety-six albums of concerto, solo and chamber music available, on labels including Naxos, Athene and NMC. He is the dedicatee of over four hundred works for violin, by composers including Gloria Coates, Hans Werner Henze, George Rochberg, David Matthews, Michael Hersch, Howard Skempton and Jörg Widmann. Peter was recently elected an honorary professor of the Royal Northern College of Music and is the Viotti Lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music. Peter and Malene’s work on this project has been supported and enabled by Dansk-Norsk Fondet, Dover Arts Development, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Lysebu Oslo, KODE Museums Bergen, and the Schubert Club, St Paul Minnesota.