Magnus Granberg is a composer and performer working at an intersection between contemporary chamber music and improvisation. He is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

Born in Umeå in 1974, he studied saxophone and improvisation at the University of Gothenburg and in New York in his late teens and early twenties. Self-taught as a composer, he formed his own ensemble Skogen in 2005 trying to integrate experiences, methods and materials from various traditions of improvised and composed musics into a new modus operandi.

His music has been performed in Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, England, Austria, Hungary and Slovenia, broadcast by public radio channels in England (BBC Radio 3 and 6), Germany (SWR 2), Sweden (SR P2), Estonia, Slovenia, Serbia, Hungary and the United States, and has been published by the renowned British record label Another Timbre.

https://magnusgranberg.se/

Josefin Runsteen — Violin
My Hellgren — Cello
Anna Christensson — Piano
Ryan Packard — Percussion
Finn Loxbo — Guitar
John Eriksson — Vibraphone

“In early 2021 pianist and producer Alex Zethson asked me if I would be interested in writing some music for a hand-picked ensemble of his choosing, consisting of musicians active within various strands of contemporary musics. I was of course as honored as I was excited to get such a wonderful opportunity to get to know and work with musicians I for the most part did not know personally or had had the opportunity to work with before. So I suggested this old idea of mine to write a large piece for chamber ensemble with a variable and flexible structure where the different parts also could be performed as solo pieces as well as be combined in different ways so as to form smaller ensemble pieces of varying durations.

The piece, which is called Night Will Fade and Fall Apart, takes as its points of departure two different songs by French, late medieval composer Solage (Tres gentil cuer and En l’amoureux vergier) as well as from the popular song and jazz standard My Foolish Heart by Victor Young and Ned Washington, from whose lyrics the piece also borrows its title, albeit in a slightly transformed manner.

— Magnus Granberg

Vilhelm Bromander (1988) is a Swedish bass player and composer deeply entwined in the Stockholm experimental and free jazz scene. He can be heard in groups such as Svenska Folkjazzkvartetten, Christer Bothén 3,in duo with Fredrik Rasten and with Elin Forkelid plays for Trane among others.

Vilhelm has also worked a lot with solo double bass - where he directs his focus to acoustic details such as beating, common partials and difference tones – to hear what happens with our perception when we allow ourselves to be immersed in sound for a longer stretch of time. In January -22 he also debuted as a soprano saxophone player with his new chamber work, Aurora, that was released by warm winters ltd.

As an improviser he has played with musicians like Axel Dörner, Tisha Mukarji, Michael Thieke, Sten Sandell, Phil Minton, Mazen Kerbaj, Maria W. Horn, Christer Bothén, Katt Hernandez, Lisa Ullén, Henrik Olsson to name a few. He is also an active session musician and has played with Daniel Johnston, Sara Parkman, Saigon, Musette, Joe Davolaz, Rotem Geffen, Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation, The Tiny & Music Is The Weapon.

vilhelmbromander.com

Ryan Packard  is a percussionist, composer and sound artist currently based in Stockholm, SE.  His compositional language is concerned with intimacy, interdependence and sympathetic relationships.

His sound installations have been featured at the MCA Chicago, Lumen Project Stockholm, Fuji Textile Week Japan, Graham Foundation, Defibrillator, Hyde Park Arts Center, Galeria Labirynt, High Concept Labs, Constellation Chicago, Norberg Festival and Experimental Sound Studio. He has collaborated with artists like Nelly Agassi, Dave Rempis, Ben LaMar Gay, Brandon Lopez, Okkyung Lee, Will Guthrie, Nate Wooley, Peter Ablinger, Julio Estrada, Annea Lockwood, Magnus Granberg, John McCowen, Seth Parker Woods among many others.

He’s a member of the new music ensemble, Fonema Consort and has performed with Ensemble Dal Niente, Norrlandsoperan, Ensemble Nist Nah, Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society, tya ensemble, MOCREP, a.pe.ri.od.ic ensemble, NYC experimental rock group Skeleton$ and Architek Percussion Quartet.

Some of his current projects are Kommun, Kyosaku, ZRL and the Chicago minimal free jazz quartet, RedGreenBlue. He has released on American Dreams Records, Astral Spirits, Dinzu Artefacts, Thanatosis, Insub, Fönstret Edition Festival Records, Shinkoyo, Amalgam and No Index. Ryan has a masters of music from McGill University and bachelor of music from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Elsa Bergman studied double bass in Trondheim, Norway, at Sund Folkehøgskole and later at the Jazz Department of the Norwegian Academy of Music. Since then she has worked in various free jazz and improvisation groups.

She released her debut solo album 'A' in 2021.

Finn Loxbo is a guitarist with a focus on free improvisation. His music is usually on either side of two dynamic extremes: quiet acoustic or very loud. On the quiet side we find him in his own ensemble Kommun, as a solo act and in collaborations with, for example, Skogen. Examples from the louder side are Kyosaku, Anna Högberg Extended Attack, and previously in bands such as Doglife, Strändernas svall and Fire! Orchestra.

www.finnloxbo.com

Leif Elggren is a Swedish artist who lives and works in Stockholm.

Active since the late 1970s, Leif Elggren has become one of the most constantly surprising conceptual artists to work in the combined worlds of audio and visual. A writer, visual artist, stage performer and composer, he has many albums to his credits, solo and with the Sons of God, on labels such as Ash International, Touch, Radium and his own Firework Edition.

His music, often conceived as the soundtrack to a visual installation or experimental stage performance, usually presents carefully selected sound sources over a long stretch of time and can range from mesmerizingly quiet electronics to harsh noise. His wide-ranging and prolific body of art often involves dreams and subtle absurdities, social hierarchies turned upside-down, hidden actions and events taking on the quality of icons.

leifelggren.org

Lisa Ullén lives in Stockholm, but grew up in the northern part of Sweden. She is a graduate of Stockholm’s Royal College of Music where she studied classical piano in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

A versatile player with a singular musical vision, Ullén has repeatedly proven her ability to imprint her absolute sense for tonal texture on whatever musical context she appears in from duos and small group collaborations with Nina de Heney and Okkyung Lee to larger ensemble situations such as Anna Högberg Attack!, Vilhelm Bromander Initiative and her own Motståndsorkestern (Resistance Orchestra).

lisaullen.com

Heby, Sweden
Born 1956,
Musician, Drums.
Free Improvisation, Free Jazz. Member of Gush since 1988, Other groups, Tarfala Trio, The Electrics, Trespass Trio, amongst others.