Worcester Morning Daily Spy

SWEDISH MUSICAL FESTIVAL.

Great Biennial Event to Be Followed by a Trip to Europe.

New York, May 29.-Every Swede "with a voice" will be in the city next week if he can get here for the second biennial musical festival of the Swedish-Americans, which will be held June 1 and 2, at Carnegie Music Hall, and there is no sacrifice a musical Swede will not make to get to a concert. The western states, the home of the Americanized Swede, will be represented by a melodious army that selected Chicago for the rendezvous and chartered a magnificently equipped Erie train, elaborately decorated with banners and flags, to transport the singers to the coast. Chicago and the west is sprinkled with Swedish singing clubs and each one has striven to send at least one delegate. About five hundred of the six hundred singers belonging to the American Union of Swedish Singers will take part in the festival, and the soloists of international reputation who will appear are: Lilla Juel, Ida Hallbeck, A. Staberg-Hall, Tor Pyk, Oscar Ringvall, John Ortengren and Conrad Behrens.

These will appear with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Brooklyn, directed by Professor Oscar Ringvall, the director of the musical festivals in Chicago during the world's fair and at Minneapolis in 1891. Chauncey Depew will deliver an address during the festival. An elaborate program for the entertaining of the guests has been arranged. On June 5 about 150 singers will, with their families and friends, embark on the City of Rome bound for Glasgow, where the European concert tour will begin. Concerts will be given at Edinburgh and Glasgow. A special steamer will carry the singers to Gothenburg. Concerts have been arranged to be given at all the principal Swedish cities en route to Stockholm. King Oscar will receive the singers at the summer palace at Drottningholm, and everything indicates that they will receive an enthusiastic welcome. On the return voyage a series of concerts will be given at Copenhagen, Hamburg, London and other continental cities. Gustaf Hallbom, secretary of the union, says the travelers will go abroad not merely as Swedish singers, but as representatives of the musical element in America.

The American Union of Swedish Singers was organized in Chicago in 1893, having previously been a member of the Scandinavian Singing Union, organized in 1886. At present the Swedish Union consists of forty-one clubs. The officers of the union are: President, Charles K. Johansen, New York; first vice president, O. F. Nelson, Chicago; second vice president, John T. Nordstrom, St. Paul, Minn.; secretary, Gustaf Hallbom of Chicago.