Magnus Granberg & Skogen: Trouble, Had It All My Days

Wednesday 26 November 2025

Konserthuset Grünewaldsalen, Stockholm SE

Seth Starre Lacotte

Skogen firar sitt tjugoårsjubileum med ett uruppförande av tonsättaren Magnus Granbergs stycke Trouble, Had it All My Days. Stycket tar sin utgångspunkt i en aria ur Bachs kantat BWV 21 (Ich hatte viel Bekümmerniß) men lånar sin titel från en textrad ur en sång av den amerikanske bluessångaren och gitarristen Mississippi John Hurt.

Med stöd från STIM Forward Fund, Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse, Stiftelsen Längmanska Kulturfonden och Statens Kulturråd.

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.

Skogen

Skogen is a Swedish ensemble working at an intersection between contemporary chamber music and improvisation. The ensemble was founded in 2005 and has since its inception collaborated regularly with international artists such as Angharad Davies, Ko Ishikawa, Toshimaru Nakamura, Rhodri Davies and Simon Allen. The ensemble has mainly been performing music by its founder Magnus Granberg, but has also performed and recorded music by composers such as Anders Dahl and Morgan Evans-Weiler.

The music, which originates from the interplay between composition and improvisation and between individual and collective processes, is a poetical practice which in subtle and seemingly paradoxical ways unifies order with chaos, unity with diversity and the past with the present.

The ensemble has released seven CDs on the renowned British record label Another Timbre and has performed at festivals such as Ultima (NO), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Himera (FI), Sound of Stockholm (SE), Splitter Music Festival (DE) and Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon (AT).

Personnel (various settings and sizes):

Eva Lindal (violin, Anna Lindal (violin) Angharad Davies (violin) Leo Svensson Sander (cello), Stina Hellberg Agback (harp), Rhodri Davies (harp), Magnus Granberg (prepared piano), John Eriksson (vibraphone and percussion) Simon Allen (vibraphone and percussion) Erik Carlsson (percussion), Henrik Olsson (percussion and electronics), Petter Wästberg (electronics and objects), Ko Ishikawa (sho), Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) and Heather Roche (clarinet).