Örjan Sandred
Composer
NEWS
Composition week at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (Portugal)
The Stenhammar String Quartet will join me during this week where three of my compositions with live electronics will be performed: Sketches of Shifting Landscapes (string quartet and live electronics), A Ghazal (soprano and live electronics) and Ice Fog (alto saxophone, piano and live electronics).
The Spaces Between IV
The Sixtrum Percussion Ensemble from Montreal will premiere my new composition Tilting Points for percussion sextet and live electroncis at their concert during the Canadian Percussion Network event in Winnipeg
August 8, 2025.
Percussion x 6
Tilting Points
“Tilting Points” is a new composition for percussion sextet and live electronics, commissioned by the Sixtrum percussion ensemble in Montreal. The music reaches points where the piece breaks into open interactive episodes where the performers compete over the attention from the live electronics. The computer tracks their actions, enforces rules and keeps score. Break the rules, and you risk falling behind. By the end, a winner emerges.
The instrumentation is focused on drums, connected to the computer via contact microphones, creating a tight interplay between acoustic gesture and digital response.
The commission is supported by the Manitoba Arts Council.
String Quartet and live electronics
Sketches of Shifting Landscapes
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York provided me with a unique opportunity to work on a composition for stringquartet and live electronics where I collaborated with the Stenhammar Stringquartet at several stages during the creative process. The ½-hour long composition was premiered at a live@CIRMMT concert in Montreal, and then later at a Ground Swell concert in Winnipeg. Several performances are planned in Europe during 2025.
Current project
Installation for a dancer and 3 conductors
This is a work-in-progress in collaboration with Stephan Azulay (principal dancer at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet), Hans Ek (freelance conductor in Sweden), Julian Pelicano (conductor of the National Ballet of Canada) and Jacquie Dawson (Director of Bands and Professor at the University of Manitoba Desautels Faculty of Music). More information to come.
New video
Extending percussion.
Composed during the pandemic, "Mimétisme" for percussion, live electronics and live video processing explores how visual cues can be integrated into a musical idea. It was written for two percussionists to be performe at their locations: Victoria Sparks in Canada and Jonny Axelsson in Sweden. Click the video to the right to see Jonny Axelsson's interpretation.
Recently premiered
The climate crisis in a piano format.
"Footprints", composed for pianist Megumi Masaki, is a composition for piano and live electronics where I attempt to express the process of climate change in music. Through detection and A.I. algorithms, the electronic part slowly learns the gestures the pianist is playing during a performance. It uses this information to build its response – at first it is a very rough and poor attempt to imitation, but successively it becomes better until it will turn obsessive and destructive.
Voice and electronics
A song about alienation.
My art song "A Ghazal" for soprano and live electronics will be back on the concert stage in 2024. Gustaf Frödings powerful poem from 1891 paints a beautiful landscape experienced by someone suffering from alhoholism and mental illness. The short extract from the 17-minute composition in the video to the right features soprano Sarah Jo Kirsch.
![02b.SonicTrails[18568]](https://impro.usercontent.one/appid/oneComWsb/domain/sandred.com/media/sandred.com/onewebmedia/02b.SonicTrails%5B18568%5D.jpg?etag=%2216ec2d-653da381%22&sourceContentType=image%2Fjpeg&ignoreAspectRatio&resize=2500,1686&quality=85 "02b.SonicTrails[18568]")
![07.SonicTrails[18567]](https://impro.usercontent.one/appid/oneComWsb/domain/sandred.com/media/sandred.com/onewebmedia/07.SonicTrails%5B18567%5D.jpg?etag=%2215f927-653da393%22&sourceContentType=image%2Fjpeg&ignoreAspectRatio&resize=2500,1426&quality=85 "07.SonicTrails[18567]")
![12.SonicTrails[18566]](https://impro.usercontent.one/appid/oneComWsb/domain/sandred.com/media/sandred.com/onewebmedia/12.SonicTrails%5B18566%5D.jpg?etag=%222fddf8-653da3a1%22&sourceContentType=image%2Fjpeg&ignoreAspectRatio&resize=2500,1520&quality=85 "12.SonicTrails[18566]")
Installation
The abandoned city.
“Sonic Trails : Lockdown” is a multimedia installation reflecting on a city in Covid-19 lockdown. Using algorithms for Artificial Intelligence, a visitor is transferred between concrete and abstract experiences in a 3-dimensional world created through projections on semi-transparent screens and a multi-channel loudspeaker system. Visitors are immersed in various events in the lockdown city occurring regardless of their presence. Using multiple audio-visual samples of these urban phenomena, the installation creates a new place for visitors to inhabit.
The installation was created in close collaboration with Max Sandred.
CONTACT
Most of my scores are available via Svensk Musik.
https://www.svenskmusik.org/en
My scores at Svensk Musik are listed here