“Ingrained with generational storytelling, Red Thread fuses the past into the present with gorgeous harmonies and folk sensibilities. Their music harkens to the importance of ancestry, culture, and traditions still present in our lives.”
– Music in Minnesota

Red Thread plays original folk music illuminated from within by lineages of Yiddish, Balkan, Irish, and Scandinavian immigrant singers. With the tight harmonies of a family band and lush, innovative instrumentation, the ensemble shares traditional and new music with warmth and humor.

Red Thread infuses their interpretations of traditional music with a harmonic approach established in and liberated from classical choral singing, blending folk elements with an alternative-folk sensibility tied tightly to the Upper Midwest’s new music scene. Frontwoman Sarah Larsson is known as a performer and community organizer in the international Yiddish- and Klezmer-music revival, and for interpreting traditional music from Eastern Europe as part of The Nightingale Trio, which performed on “A Prairie Home Companion'' and has been called “a revelation” by Minnesota Public Radio's Steve Staruch. Larsson's teachers include Ethel Raim (NEA National Heritage Fellow 2018), Michael Alpert (NEA National Heritage Fellow 2015), and musicians working in the lineage of Flory Jagoda (NEA National Heritage Fellow 2002). Drawing from years of study and cultivating a unique and adventurous sound, Red Thread unspools the line of folk tradition, invoking the stories of real people’s lived experiences embedded within their songs.

Awards & recognition:
2025 Cultural Ambassadors Cohort Fellowship — Folk Will Save Us / MN Humanities Center
2024 Music faculty & Featured artist — Seattle Yiddish Festival, Seattle WA
2024 Cedar Commissions — Cedar Cultural Center (Mpls) & Jerome Foundation (New York)
2023 Artist in Residence — KlezKanada (Montreal)
2023 Commissioned Artist — Chutzpah! Festival (Vancouver) & KlezKanada (Montreal)
2023 Composer/Arranger of new music commissioned for Notes From Ukraine: A 100-Year Celebration of "Carol of the Bells" Concert, performed at Carnegie Hall, New York
2020 Lecturer: “Worlds of Sound: Learning to Listen” — Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

Performed with & opened for:
The Klezmatics (GRAMMY for Best World Music Album, 2007)
Lemon Bucket Orkestra (Canadian Folk Music Awards World Group of the Year, 2015)
Maryna Krut (upcoming)