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Hailing from Östersund, Sweden, I have studied at the Royal College of Music, Stockholm, and the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen.
In my current work, I explore quiet tension, exposedness and imperfection. I’m fascinated by the grandiosity and intimacy that a “small” music can create. A recent interest of mine is incomplete, unbalanced, or unfulfilled form. This is likely a search for some sort of “sublime imperfection”, in turn, a step in the search for an intimate music.
My works have been performed in the Nordic countries, Europe and the US by among others the Arditti quartet, ensemble recherche, the Keuris quartet, MolOt ensemble, and Norrbotten NEO. My orchestral work Half-light on desolation has been awarded multiple times and my string quartet Plasticity has been selected to numerous festivals. I have also participated in masterclasses with Chaya Czernowin, Kaija Saariaho, Simon Steen-Andersen, among others.
I grew up in Östersund, Sweden – a northern Swedish town of ca. 60 000 inhabitants, marked by being a focal point for winter sports, and sports in general for that matter.
Coming from a family with a strong musical background, at age 5 my worldview was such that I asked my mom, “Does everyone in the whole world have to play the violin?”. I was quite relieved when the answer was no. That said, I professed that I might be interested in playing trombone, for reasons unbeknownst to everyone at the time.
However, I did not actually start playing music “properly” until I, one day, heard one of my classmates in 3rd grade play the infamous Für Elise. Not wanting to be outmatched, I was prompted to pick up playing the piano. The rest is, as they say, history.
Like many others before me, my path in music has been all but straight-forward. After exploring many different genres and instruments, I started to realize that I enjoyed writing songs more than playing them. Eventually, it dawned on me that one could, actually, be a composer.
While I can’t speak for everyone growing up in Östersund, my high school years were marked by an enormous disinterest in sports. My hometown, somehow, seems to have a world cup of some sort of skiing or other every year. I was lucky to find a mentor in Johan Ederfors, a local composer, an exceedingly rare thing in my county of Jämtland.
When I first started composing, I felt like I’d come home. Studying it, even more so. Focusing 100% on writing music for the first time in my life, I was somewhat like a kid in a candy store.
However, beginning my studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm also brought on a confusion of musical identity. Writing the work Half-light on desolation represented a culmination of a melodic style informed by Stravinsky, Lutoslawski, and more. But in terms of what I actually wanted to do with my music, I was at a loss.
The work andas, upphör (2015) represents, I believe, an early indication of what would come to be my new direction. While the melodic material borrows from Half-light on desolation, the character is more subdued, the expressivity withheld.
Per Mårtensson, who began teaching at the Royal College in 2016, came to be an important mentor of mine. With his guidance, I started to find my purpose – exploring, or more precisely searching for, an intimacy in my music.
Since then, my music has focused on quiet tension, exposedness, fragments, the incomplete, and the imperfect. A recent obsession of mine is “bad timing” and simultaneous processes. Discovering Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s haunting work Stille und Umkehr has also sparked a special interest in the unfulfilled.
Nowadays based in Copenhagen, I feel like I have found my focal point at last – but that is likely a naive notion.
Master's programme in composition, 2018 - 2021
Bachelor's programme in composition, 2013 - 2016
Pre-college composition program, 2011-2013
Masterclass with Chaya Czernowin, project with the Arditti Quartet
Masterclass with Helena Tulve and Alexander Knaifel, project with MolOt ensemble
Masterclass with Kaija Saariaho and Orchestre symphonique Ose! at Archipel festivel, Geneva
Masterclass with Jaime Reis in Kyiv, Ukraine
Masterclass with Simon Steen-Andersen and Eivind Buende in Aarhus, Denmark
Masterclass with Johannes Schöllhorn and Mathias Steinauer in Ticino, Switzerland