New Swedish music on festivals

Support for new Swedish music on festivals 2016

Sweden Festival's collaboration with the Association of Swedish Composers and STIM Promotion Board is designed to support the performance of the new Swedish copyright-protected music on festivals in Sweden and abroad.

In Sweden the support this year includes 40 works of 27 Swedish composers and 13 commissioned works. The new music amounts to 14 hours and 25 minutes and is performed at 12 festivals from Haparanda in the north to Malmö in the south between June 12 and October 20, 2016 involving a total of 235 participating musicians and other artists.

Support for foreign festivals go entirely to Usedomer Music Festival on Usedom in the Baltic Sea, held between 24 September and 14 October 2016. The festival has Sweden as its theme and will be opened by Bundeskanzler Angela Merkel. Our support goes to some 20 works of at least 12 Swedish composers who represent a total of about 3 hours of music at 6 concerts. The composers include Hans-Ola Ericsson, Björn J: son Lind, Thomas Jennefelt, Maja Linderoth, Tomas Hulenvik, Allan Pettersson, Karin Rehnqvist, Sven-David Sandström, Mattias Shield, Esbjörn Svensson, Peter van Tour and Johan wool. The music is performed by the NDR Chor with conductor Philipp Ahmann, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and Elbipolis Barockorchester Hamburg with conductor Olof Boman, Gotland Wind Quintet and Wojciech Waleczek, piano, Magnus Ostrom Group, Ensemble Fleder Vocal Quartet, and Minguet Quartet and Ulf Wallin, violin. The festival contains in addition also older Swedish art music, folk and popular music, lectures and seminars, including Ingmar Bergman and his relationship to music.


The project started 2013

The Swedish Composers Society (FST) and Sweden Festivals launched a collaboration with the aim to spread the music of contemporary Swedish composer on the member festivals across Sweden. 

The cooperation, named New Swedish music on festivals is an audience development project created on a joint initiative from the two organizations. The member festivals in Sweden Festivals are offered support for concerts that include new Swedish music. FST encourages the supported festivals  also to arrange concert introductions and seminars with the composers in question.

We hope, with this idea, to create an incentive for each festival to play more music composed by our living composers, and less of the foreign dead, says Martin Q L, himself a composer and Chairman of the FST.

The Society of Swedish composers have the music, we have the festivals, the musicians and the public. We are very excited about this partnership and look forward to this summer's experiences and events, "said Peter Eriksson, President of Sweden Festivals.