Sweden’s Queen of Swing Opens Centenary Stage Company’s Season in a Class of Her Own

Eleven instruments. A finale where three trumpets play at once. Tap dancing, juggling, and a repertoire pulled straight from the golden age of swing. Gunhild Carling doesn’t do ordinary concerts, and Centenary Stage Company is opening its new season by handing her the entire stage.

Most season openers ease an audience in gently. Centenary Stage Company is doing the opposite. On Saturday, September 12, the Sitnik Theatre at the Lackland Performing Arts Center hosts Gunhild Carling, an internationally acclaimed Swedish performer whose show operates less like a concert and more like a variety spectacle from an era that supposedly doesn’t make performers like this anymore.

Carling has earned the title Sweden’s Queen of Swing honestly, and calling her a multi-instrumentalist barely covers what she actually does on stage. Across a single set, she moves between trumpet, trombone, harmonica, oboe, harp, flute, recorder, and even jazz bagpipe, an instrument most audiences have never seen live, let alone heard played with any real skill. That’s eight named instruments already, and her full range reportedly stretches to eleven total. Add tap dancing and juggling into the same performance, and it becomes clear why critics consistently describe her as a genuinely singular presence rather than just another skilled musician working a crowd.

A Finale Nobody Sees Coming

Every great variety show needs a closer strong enough to justify everything that came before it, and Carling’s is genuinely hard to believe until you see it. She closes with three trumpets, played simultaneously, a feat that sounds more like a circus stunt than a musical achievement until you consider the actual embouchure control required to pull it off cleanly rather than just for shock value. It’s the kind of moment that turns casual attendees into people who bring friends to the next show specifically to watch their reaction.

A Résumé Built on Television, Royalty, and the Internet

Carling’s path to international recognition runs through some genuinely unusual territory. She competed as a celebrity dancer on Sweden’s Let’s Dance in 2014, placing third, and later appeared on the Swedish edition of Dancing with the Stars. She performed on Sweden’s Got Talent in 2017 and brought her act to America’s Got Talent in 2019, introducing an entirely new audience to a performer who’d already been dazzling European crowds for years.

Her most prestigious engagement may have come at Sweden’s own Royal Palace, where she performed with her Carling Big Band during the celebration of King Carl XVI Gustaf’s Ruby Jubilee. That’s not a booking handed to just any touring musician. It’s the kind of invitation reserved for a performer whose command of vintage swing has been recognized at the highest levels of Swedish cultural life.

Beyond her own band, Carling has become a recognizable presence within Postmodern Jukebox’s reimagined pop catalog, lending her voice and instrumental range to inventive genre flips like a 1920s jazz swing take on “Material Girl” and a hot jazz cover of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” Those collaborations have helped push her reach well past traditional jazz audiences, contributing to more than 70 million views across social media and a silver award from YouTube along the way.

A Setlist Built for Time Travel

Audiences expecting a straightforward greatest hits set from the swing era are in for exactly what they came for, delivered with more flair than most vintage revival acts manage. Carling’s repertoire draws from genre defining standards like “Minnie the Moocher,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “All of Me,” and “It Had to Be You,” pulled from what she describes as an essentially endless catalog of material from the period. It’s less a tribute act and more a full transportation back to a specific golden era of American music, guided by a performer who clearly loves the material enough to make it feel current rather than nostalgic.

Why This Is the Right Way to Open a Season

A season opener sets the tone for everything that follows, and booking a performer this genuinely unclassifiable sends a clear signal about the kind of programming Centenary Stage Company is committed to. Carling isn’t easily filed under jazz, comedy, dance, or novelty act, because she’s fluently doing all four at once, often within the same song. For longtime subscribers, it’s a strong opening statement. For first time attendees deciding whether this venue is worth adding to a regular rotation, it’s about as convincing an introduction as a performing arts season could offer.

Between the instrumental range, the vaudeville level showmanship, and a résumé that spans royal palaces, national television, and viral internet fame, Gunhild Carling brings a genuinely rare kind of spectacle to the Sitnik Theatre stage. For anyone who loves live music with a real sense of theater built into it, this is exactly the kind of evening worth building a September Saturday around.

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Explore New Jersey covers the state’s performing arts scene, from intimate theater seasons to the touring acts that turn an ordinary Saturday night into something worth remembering. Check back for more performing arts coverage all season long.