Jan Winter

Jan Winter is a Swedish journalist and musician - artist name The Liraman Experience - with early and folk music as a special interest. He was born in Stockholm and grew up in Berlin and Paris, among other places. He was deeply involved in the Swedish folk music scene of the 70ies, above all in the wave for lesser-known folk music instruments that followed. During the 1980s, a collaboration was initiated with the musicologist Per-Ulf Allmo, with whom he published the reference works Lirans hemligheter (The secrets of the hurdy-gurdy) and Säckpipan i Norden (The bagpipe in the Nordic countries). The jointly owned publishing company Tongång (Now defunct) released over 60 CDs with Swedish folk music as main theme. Winter has lira (hurdy-gurdy ), bagpipe (especially the Swedish bagpipe) and old Nyckelharpas (keyed fiddles) as main instruments but plays a number of other older folk musical instruments as well. He has played in different groups during the years and has been a well-sought studio musician on a lot of recordings. Some of his original instrument sounds found their way to Apple's Garageband/Logic sound library, among them the legendary Nordic fiddle. Between 1976 and 2014, Winter was a reporter and foreign news editor with the news agency TT, Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå, The Swedish News agency. Lately he has been working with the Groups SLOW and Alba Tross, specialising in the Irish tradition and the folk music of the Baltic sea island Gotland respectively.