Category: Blog posts

I made it! Between Thursday June 22nd and Friday June 30th I composed over 12 minutes of brand-new music, in the form of submissions to the two composition competitions I stumbled over, two weeks ago. As I described in last week’s post, I initially focused on the brass band composition as it was the one… Continue reading Ad Astra

Less than a week after my last post, I am proud to announce that I am almost done with one of the two competition entries I mentioned last week, and have come a fair way on the other as well! The band composition is the one I have spent the most time on. It was… Continue reading Down to Brass Tacks

Two days ago, the cathedral choir sang under my direction at this year’s second Ordination Service. As a choirmaster as well as a fellow musician, it was an incredibly rewarding experience to see and hear once again the development of the choir in these part months. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I… Continue reading As Proud as One Can Be

Last year around this time, I went to the Royal Opera House in Stockholm to see their recurring anthology project ”Short Stories”: three short operas by three composers, a project with the aim to inspire composers to write more full-length operas. This year’s triple threat consisted of Ada by Christofer Elgh and Sigrid Herrault, about… Continue reading New Short Stories

Last weekend was one of the most intense ones I’ve had so far this year. Two days; two different concerts; two different roles – one incredibly tired, but also very happy, me. Throughout the 2022–2023 season, I have been working on a project for Föreningen Nymus – a local, Härnösand-based music association – arranging performances and/or… Continue reading The Big Payoff

I have the great pleasure of getting to perform twice this summer (at least!), both times in late July. It is hard to rate the two concerts, as they are very different, but nevertheless I particularly look forward to premiering a brand new composition together with the lovely bassoonist extraordinaire, Sebastian Stevensson. Long-time readers of… Continue reading Be Transformed

Two different events this past weekend caused a similar reaction in me, for similar reasons, but the situations themselves were quite different. What happened? This past Sunday, my good friend Per who works as an organist in Härnösand Cathedral performed two great 20th century organ works: L’Ascension by Olivier Messiaen and Prélude, Adagio et Choral… Continue reading Different Kinds of Play

The other day, I stumbled on a quote by composer Alfred Schnittke which I sympathised with quite a bit. It is important to try and avoid projecting yourself onto someone else without a deeper understanding of who that other person was (or is), but in meditating on that quote, I felt I came a little… Continue reading Better Safe than Sorry

I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Härnösand Cathedral Choir since January as their temporary leader. I have assisted their principal leader off and on over the past couple of years as a substitute conductor, but this meant being able to work continuously with the choir over an entire semester. The ”grand finale” of… Continue reading Growing Together

The other day, I stumbled upon a twentieth-century composer whom I had never heard of before: the Austrian pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda, who made a name for himself in both the classical and jazz worlds, respectively. I happened on Friedrich Gulda by way of the French virtuoso cellist Edgar Moreau, who recorded Gulda’s Concerto… Continue reading All That Glitters Is Not Gulda