Marie Samuelsson works with the effect of contrast; between the rhythmically exciting and impressionistically beautiful, between floating flageolets and menacing double bass roars. She composes chamber music, choral pieces, orchestral works and opera, sometimes with elements of electronics. In her tonal language, the concrete sounds of nature, animals and the city can be found musicalized in symbiosis with human musical instruments. Samuelsson was awarded the Royal The Musical Academy's Stora Christ Johnson prize 2023 for his double concertoFire Fistfor guitar, violin and orchestra.
It can start with a sound. A seed. Marie Samuelsson (b. 1956) keeps her ears open for everything that sounds around her. Who knows what temporary sound will stay in the mind, which will germinate and become the start of a large and impressive compositional building. This has happened several times. She once happened to knock on a large ventilation drum made of galvanized sheet metal, and discovered what great tonal possibilities it had. The result wasAir drum III(1999), premiered on Swedish television by the Radio Symphony Orchestra, a frequently played orchestral work in which three percussionists treat the instrument available to interested ensembles, and which by this time has been traveling around Sweden and as far as Germany and France.
She was fascinated by recorded wolves and processed their cries electronically. In the finished piece,In the eye of the wolf(1997), saxophonist Jörgen Pettersson plays together with the recorded wolves – with roots in ancient times and at the same time a step into the future. Electronic sounds reappear in several works, and she deepened her knowledge of such for Pär Lindgren and as a selected participant in an exclusive course for professional composers at IRCAM in Paris.
Since the turn of the millennium, her creation has meant that the boundaries have been widened and the content deepened. With impressive strength, she has presented one masterpiece after another with constantly varied structure and expression.Rotationsis a string orchestra piece that accompanied Musica Vitae on tour to Italy. In Sweden and Finland, Anna Lindal has played what some critics have highlighted as Samuelsson's heaviest work to date, the violin concertoBastet Sun Goddess(2004).
In 2007, a four-day composer festival was dedicated to her music in Stockholm's Konserthus, when nineteen of her works in various genres were performed. During the festival, the commissioned piece was premieredSinglefor orchestra. Again the creative spark was awakened by a temporary sound phenomenon, when a large plate fell spinning to the floor.
In 2013, the opera Jorun orm i öga, to a libretto by Kerstin Ekman, attracted a lot of attention when it was staged at Vadstenaakademien. A deeply moving drama inspired by the women of the poetic Edda.
In 2015, Marie Samuelsson began work on herLove triology, three orchestral works linked by the theme of love.Aphrodite - fragment of Sapphofor mezzo-soprano and orchestra, is dedicated to erotic love, and was commissioned by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and premiered in the Berwaldhallen in Stockholm with Katija Dragojevic as soloist.A new child of infinity - To my two sons, for clarinet and orchestra, touches on the love between parent and child, and was composed for the Malmö Symphony Orchestra and its solo clarinetist Johnny Teyssier. The last work in the trilogy is a chamber orchestra piece entitledEros effect and solidarity,where Marie Samuelsson found inspiration in George Nicholas Katsifica's texts, which deal with the solidarity love in collective movements. The work
premiered in 2016 by the Nordic Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Sarah Ioannides, who then brought the piece to the USA and the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra in 2018. The entire Love Trilogy was recorded and released on CD in 2019. (Daphne CD 1062)
Marie Samulesson's great commitment to environmental issues is reflected in works such asFive seasons(2017), for string orchestra and audio file, to poems by Mimmi Palm, a commission from Musica Vitae which was premiered during Båstad's Chamber Music Festival and then played during the Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm. The duo concertFire Fist(2019) for guitar, violin and orchestra, has been inspired by a small blue flower whose seeds only germinate after a forest fire. The concerto was written for Jacob Kellermann, Catharina Chen, the Gävle Symphony Orchestra and the conductor Christian Karlsen, and was awarded the Royal Academy of Music's Stora Christ Johnson prize in 2023.
In 2021, Marie Samuelsson received the honorable commission to compose an anniversary overture for the Norrland Opera Symphony Orchestra's 30th anniversary, a piece she callsSound for new times.
Marie Samuelssons has been awarded a number of prizes for her creation.
2008: Kurt Atterberg prize
2011: Hilding Rosenberg prize
2016: Ingvar Lidholm prize
2023: Kgl Musikaliska Akademen's Stora Christ Johnson prize
