I grew up in my parents' music store in Orsa. They said I sang before I spoke, and music remained an essential part of my life. My professional life began in Italy and lasted there for almost 30 years. But it feels right to be home, in Dalarna, again. Anticipation is buzzing in the air for the upcoming music season!
In the music store, everyone hung out – music lovers, dance bands, jazz and folk musicians. I tinkered on pianos and made my own songs even as a child. The dream, the unattainable one, was to write music, to become a composer. The cello became my passport to the Conservatory in Falun, which then led to Arranging and Composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. I met an Italian pianist, and after my studies, I went to Rome, hoping for musician jobs in the Italian film industry, which was big then.
My first job, in 1986, was, oddly enough, the music for an American film, featuring Mickey Rooney, among others. One job led to the next. Music for film, documentaries, also orchestrations and arrangements for more renowned film composers, and glittering Italian TV shows, which often hosted world artists. It had to be fast, like an assembly line, in mixed genres. A rather anonymous work for better or worse.
The hope of being able to write MY music came when a friend persuaded me to participate in a competition organized by the Swedish Church in Falun. A folk music-inspired mass, Missa Dalecarliensis, came into being. But few knew me here, so I participated in another competition, organized by Allmänna Sången in Uppsala, with the work Speeches. But then, in 2016, I left my jobs in Italy for the Swedish choral world, and I write music for both choirs and ensembles. From here, my music travels out into the world, and I am both proud and grateful, but also for my years in Italy.
Dalasinfoniettan's Composer in Residence will be my "revenge". I'm using the orchestra again, but now for my own music. My orchestral work Radices has, after all, already been performed here, at the Dalarna Orchestra Association's 100th anniversary. But it will be exciting to hear the work played again this December by Dalasinfoniettan. The contact with the musicians and with conductor Claire Levacher is also exciting. Interaction, interplay, and collaboration are inspiring, and were not a given in my Italian working life.
"Expectations" therefore becomes my theme for the season. Both I, musicians, and audience certainly have expectations of each other, of me and my music, but above all of Kristinehallen which is being inaugurated, and my overture for the inauguration will be called precisely Förväntningar (Expectations). Can the season live up to everyone's expectations?
We will, of course, experience, feel, and get different impressions of both the music and Kristinehallen.
