Musician/Performer

Ken Mattsson has been a singer, dancer, instrumentalist, actor, promoter and instructor since he was a little boy. He’s performed in numerous genres and in venues as different as Club Passim and Boston’s Symphony Hall.

Singer

Ken has performed singing everything from a capella Scandinavian ballads to a chorus member with orchestra singing Bach. He has studied voice with Lauralyn Kolb and Todd Gordon, and has been a soloist with the Stow Festival Chorus, Christmas Revels, and numerous church services and weddings. He has performed as a duo with Lynn Noel, featuring boisterous Power Harmonies at venues small and large, including their annual performance at the New England Folk Festival. Larger ensembles have included the Masterworks Chorale, Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, Stämbandet, and Revels Singers. He’s also sung shape note music with Norumbega Harmony, West Gallery music with The West Gallery Quire, and other folk ensembles. Whether it’s Scandinavian, gospel, or any other genre, Ken’s probably at least tried it, and is known for his “vocal water skiing” ability to latch onto any song and harmonize with it.

Instrumentalist

Ken first picked up the fife as a boy to march with his Dad in the Assabet Village Minutemen during the time around the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Concord. Since then, he picked up clarinet and tenor saxophone in junior high school, and then tin whistle and recorder at various times. It wasn’t until he was in the crazy final days of graduate school that he finally purchased a hammered dulcimer and that started his bout with Acquired Musical Instrument Syndrome (AMIS) where he just wanted to learn to play more instruments. While the hammered dulcimer has been the main instrument in his life, he has recently been spending more time with his ukulele, as it’s the only instrument he can use to accompany his singing. Along the way, an autoharp, concertina, mountain dulcimer, guitar, and mandolin have found their way into his instrument collection.

Songwriting

While I started writing tunes (waltzes, reels, and jigs) in the early 2000’s, I didn’t start writing songs until 2020, when I found out about February Album Writing Month. This is a group of approximately 2,500 songwriters from around the world who get together in February with the goal of writing 14 songs (i.e. enough to put together an album). I started off after hearing a passing mention about it about it in a podcast on January 28, 2020 (and it wasn’t even the subject of the discussion), and went to find it on the internet and see what it was about. My initial feelings was that this terrified me, and it was what I needed to do.

Since 2020, I’ve taking part in FAWM and also the related 50 Songs in 90 Days Challenge, which goes from July 4 to October 1 every year. Between these challenges and some ongoing support from other emerging songwriters, I’ve written somewhere around 100 songs so far, and many of them I’ve been very happy with them and they’ve been well received by many audiences.

I’m continually working at getting better, and I’m continuing to write, perform, and develop content to put out to the world try things out.

You can download my recordings, Breaking Through and Courage to Play for free (with donations accepted). I am currently working on my first full-length album, The Solitary Years, and a number of singles. Audio engineering is a hard thing, but I’m trying to learn that too and luckily have a lot of friends who can help me.

Dancer

Ken started dancing at age 9 in modern western square dancing, and spent most of his teenage years going from dance to dance. He started doing traditional New England contra dancing at the Concord Scout House in the 1980’s, and has been doing it ever since. Always looking for different ways to move, he also performed historical dance with Veronica McClure, as well as lessons in ballet, jazz, and modern dance at Hamilton College. He’s also a dancer with Recently Traditional Fictional Morris (RTFM) which celebrates the start of winter at sundown on October 31st every year in Somerville, MA. Along the way, he’s taken workshops and tried everything from tap to Scandinavian dance.

Actor

While not as broad as his other performances, Ken first stepped on the stage as Prince Dauntless in Once Upon a Mattress at Assabet Valley High School. Numerous community theatre performances in the Boston area followed, culminating with a role in Vokes Theater‘s production of Cabaret in 1983. Ken then took a break from acting until he returned in 2018 as a cast member, dancer and tenor soloist in the Nordic Christmas Revels, performing 18 shows to over 20,000 audience members. While not on the stage, Ken has performer with the Paper Bag Mummers, doing street theatre in the English mumming tradition since the late 2000’s.