Benjamin Staern has an obvious place among the Scandinavian composers of his generation. With the symphonic work The Threat of War, he made a name for himself early on, already during his studies, and he has since developed several branches in his music-making - large-scale orchestral works, musical drama, chamber works and solo pieces. A special and important aspect of his creation is his ability to associate tones and timbres with different colors, something that characterizes his colorful tonal language.
Benjamin Staern(b. 1978) began his musical career with studies in cello, piano and percussion. He studied musicology at Lund University and between 1998-2005 composition at the Academy of Music in Malmö for Rolf Martinsson, Hans Gefors and Luca Francesconi. He made an early breakthrough during his studies with the symphonic workThe Threat of War(1999).
Since then, Staern has developed a deeply personal style and a repertoire that includes orchestral and chamber music, music drama, solo works and electroacoustic music. An interesting aspect of Staern as a composer is his unusual ability to associate tones and timbres with different colors and shades. This is a variant of the phenomenon of synesthesia, and is fundamental to how he perceives and creates music. This is reflected in his sound world as well as in many of his work titles (Yellow Skies, Color Wanderingetc.)
Today, Benjamin Staern has established himself as one of the leading Scandinavian composers of his generation. Among his works, the concert opening piece can be mentionedJubileecomposed for the Gothenburg Symphony in 2009,Goodbye– concerto for orchestra (2013) for the Malmö Symphony Orchestra,Songs about dazzling white love(2013) for Anna Larsson and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, and his first symphony with the titlePolar Vortex(2014), a joint commission between Gävle, Helsingborg and Norrköping Symphony Orchestras.
The clarinet concert received great attentionWorried Soulsfrom 2011 composed for Karin Dornbusch and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, which was awarded the major Christ Johnson prize in 2012.
Staern was 2010-14 composer-in-residence at the New European Ensemble, for whom he wrote works such asTrantromer songsand the chamber symphonyBells and Waves, winner of the Music Publishers' Prize 2011, as well as the multimedia workSAIYAH2014.
In the summer of 2016, Benjamin Staern was named "composer profile of the year" at the Båstad chamber music festival, when, among other things, you heard the premiere ofAir-Spiral-Light,a concert for guitar and chamber ensemble with Jacob Kellermann as soloist. This work was also awarded the Music Publishers' Prize.
In December 2016, it was Benjamin Staern's premiere as an opera composer when his family operaThe Snow Queen, to a libretto by Anelia Kadieva Jonsson after a fairy tale by HC Andersen, was staged at Malmö Opera. It was a huge success with sold-out houses and great reviews. In 2019, The Snow Queen had its German premiere at Theater Vorpommern and in 2021-22 it was time for the Stockholm premiere at the Royal Opera.
2017 cameThe story of a princess,a sequel to Stravinsky's The Story of a Soldier to a text by Mi Tyler, and in 2019 the chamber opera hadHilma,about the life and creation of the artist Hilma af Klint, premiered at the Moderna Musée in Stockholm and was subsequently staged at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
In April 2022, Benjamin Staern was dedicated to Stockholm's Konserthus Composer Weekend, where his second symphonyThrough Purgatory to Paradisepremiered by the Royal Philharmonic under the direction of Cathrine Winnes.
