ABOUT/CONTACT

LONG BIO

For the past three decades, Minneapolis-based musician and songwriter Jonathan Rundman has built a singular career, nurtured a remarkably diverse audience, and generated wide critical acclaim. Born and raised in the isolated Finnish-American communities of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Rundman reveals his influences through his surprising versatility as an instrumentalist and composer.

Adventurous and prolific in the studio and on stage, Rundman’s output encompasses indie rock to choral arrangements, fiddle tunes to synth pop. His music has been acclaimed in the pages of Billboard, the New York Times, Paste Magazine, and more unlikely publications like the orchestral Strings Magazine and the German edition of Rolling Stone. His songs have been featured on television’s Ellen Degeneres Show, CBS This Morning, The Travel Channel, and Huomenta Suomi (Good Morning Finland), and he has performed live on National Public Radio’s Mountain Stage program.

On the road nearly full time for 30 years, Rundman has appeared as a solo acoustic troubadour, hired gun multi-instrumentalist, Nordic folk ensemble player, university lecturer, workshop facilitator, and occasional rock band frontman. Alternating between guitar, piano, mandolin, accordion, and synthesizers, he has shared the stage with artists such as Midwestern rockers the BoDeans, British punk legend Jon Langford of the Mekons, and Finnish folk fiddler extraordinaire Arto Järvelä. Since 2014 Jonathan Rundman has toured, written, and recorded with indie-Americana pioneer Walter Salas-Humara and his band The Silos. Rundman’s festival appearances include SXSW, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, the Great Lakes Folk Festival, Folk Alliance, Luther500 in Germany, and Lost In Music in Finland.

In September of 2021 Jonathan Rundman released his first book Lost Songs of the Suomi Synod. Ten years in the making, this ethnomusicological memoir collects 28 songs from the Finnish-American Lutheran tradition. Notated and translated arrangements are included, along with historical and musical commentary. Rundman has unearthed obscure contributions from such luminaries as Elias Lönnrot (collector of the Kalevala), Finland’s national poet J. L. Runeberg, Jean Sibelius (composer of Finlandia), and Martin Luther. Some of these songs have not been heard or sung in North America for a century, and some have never before appeared in English. In 2022 Jonathan Rundman was awarded the Frederick Buechner Prize for Excellence in Writing.

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