2012 has been an exciting year for Kustbandet with, among other things, tours with legendary 
English bandleader and trombone player Chris Barber, festivals in Denmark and Norway, USA tour with a performance at “A Praire Home Companion” radio show and opening of Swedish Cultural Center in Minneapolis, and an anniversary concert at a sold out Stockholm Concert Hall. 
“The Roaring Twenties” and the Swing Era of the thirties were the classic jazz decades. Kustbandet has its place among the most respected performers of the jazz that was emerging in Chicago and Harlem during the “Jazz Age”. The band started in 1962 as a smaller New Orleans jazz group by Kenneth Arnström and Christer “Cacka” Ekhé, but was after a while inspired by musicians like Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Duke Ellington and Count Basie as well as the early swing bands. As Swedish jazz ambassadors Kustbandet has gained world reputation with personal interpretations of the old masters. Outstanding soloists and instrumentalists with the right “sense for feeling ” ( sorry, the Swedish pun can not really be translated, but we think you get it……..) have been frequent guests. The band has played at everything from backyard parties to Nobel Prize banquets, from Lapponia in the North to Australia in the South, from New Orleans in the West to Tokyo in the East.
