Join the Swedish American Museum for our annual Jenny Lind concert. The Royal Swedish Academy of Music has selected the 2023 “Jenny Lind” winner to perform in Sweden and the United States. This year’s program features Josefine Mindus accompanied by pianist Rebecca Elsgard. The 60 minute repertoire of music including pieces by Edvard Grieg, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson.

Known as the ‘Swedish Nightengale,’ Jenny Lind was a Swedish opera singer, who performed in soprano roles throughout Sweden and Europe. She undertook an extraordinarily popular concert tour across the United States in 1850. Since 1875, the Royal Swedish Musical Academy has managed a donation from the world-famous opera singer, and since 1965, the Folkets Hus & Parker have appointed a Jenny Lind Scholar who has toured in both Sweden and North America. This year’s scholar is Josefine Mindus.

About Josefine Mindus
“Josefine Mindus is a singer with a fantastic way of combining technical brilliance with captivating stage presence. Josefine impressed the jury with her beautiful soprano, but also by performing her own composition. We see in Josefine a great artist in the making.”
Kungliga Musikaliska Akademien in cooperation with Folkets Hus och Parker.

For soprano Josefine Mindus (b. 1994 in Stockholm, Sweden), music has always been a natural part of life. She sang in the choir at the Adolf Fredrik’s Music School in Stockholm and played the violin in her free time, mostly in folk music groups that allowed for improvisation.

During her high school years, she started composing music and when she had graduated, she continued to The Gotland School of Music Composition. This education opened her eyes to what music can be. During this time, she attended a streaming from the Metropolitan in New York of “The Tempest” by Thomas Adés and fell in love with opera. This experience made her curious about opera as an art form.

Josefine continued her studies of music and attended Lilla Akademien in Stockholm and then Vadstena Folkhögskola, a school that became decisive for her interest in chamber music and Romantic era music.  Her interest in Romance music led her to attend a music school in Hannover, Germany, where she studied singing in Marek Rzepka’s class and for the pianist Jan Philip Schulze. Parallel to her studies, she worked at the opera studio Komische Oper in Berlin, where she sang Papagena (Die Zauberflöte), Zerlina (Don Giovanni) and Euridice (L’Orfeo). In 2022, Josefine had her Swedish debut with the main character Bess in the opera “Breaking the waves” by Missy Mazzolis at the Vadstena Academy.

Josefine has received many scholarships; including the Confidencenstipendium by the Anders Wall Foundation, a scholarship from Jubelfonden and one from the Musikaliska Akademien. She has also participated in several competitions, and was recently awarded second prize in the competition Bundeswettbewerb Gesang in Berlin, Germany. Her desire is to convey to the audience everything that music awakens in herself.

Right now, Josefine is singing the role of the First Forest Nymph in Dvořák’s “Rusalka” and the role of the Princess Nicoletta in Prokofiev’s “Love for Three Oranges” at the Komische Oper Berlin. This spring, she is looking forward to her debut as Atalanta in Händel’s “Xerxes”.

About Rebecka Elsgard, pianist
Rebecka Elsgard was born in 1993 in Kolmården, Sweden. She started playing the piano at the age of 10 and later started studying music and graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the Malmö Academy of Music. Rebecka’s interest in playing with singers began during her preparatory studies at the Vadstena Folkhögskola.

Rebecka has since received several scholarships, including the scholarship from the John Andersson Foundation in Anderslöv and the Foundation’s GT Bäckman scholarship, two of Sweden’s largest music scholarships. She has also been a piano soloist with several orchestras and premiered works by, among others, Tobias Broström and Anna-Lena Laurin.

But above all Rebecka is a pianist who is best at the piano with a singer by her side. She has worked as an accompanist and conductor at the Skånska Opera and Vadstena Academy, and in the spring of 2023, she worked as conductor at Malmö Opera’s performance of Marguerite.

After her piano degree, Rebecka realized that the interest in playing with singers mainly comes from her desire to sing herself, and then made the decision to study singing. After further studies at Vadstena Folkhögskola, the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, HMT Leipzig, and finally the Opera College in Stockholm, Rebecka graduated as an opera singer in the spring of 2023.

In the fall of 2022, Rebecka participated in Folkoperan’s production of Norma and played the role of Clotilde, and she also played the role of Frosch in Malmö Opera’s production of Marguerite. She is the 2023 Bayreuth scholarship recipient.