Biography

Örjan Sandred, (b.1964) grew up in Uppsala, Sweden, where he composed music for most of the active ensembles in the city. After having studied Musicology at the University, he moved to Stockholm to attend the composition program at the Royal College of Music in 1985. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (1990) and "Diplom i Komposition" (1997). During this period, he also went abroad and took private lessons in Copenhagen and London with Poul Ruders (from 1991 to 92). In 1994 - 95 he moved to Montreal and studied composition at McGill University (Master's program).

At the end of his studies in Stockholm, he started using computers when composing, and it was a natural step for him to attended the annual course in composition and musical computing at IRCAM in Paris in 1997 - 98. Among his teachers are Sven-David Sandström, Magnus Lindberg, Pär Lindgren, Daniel Börtz, Bruce Mather, Bruce Pennycook (computer music) and Bill Brunson (electro-acoustic music).

Compositions

Sandred has written music for different types of ensembles, everything from symphony orchestra to chamber music and electro-acoustic music. His pieces have very different sources of inspiration:

Cracks and Corrossion I and II (2000 and 2004) are two pieces that investigate how the same musical idea can be expressed differently with different starting points. The first piece is for clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano, commissioned by Theatre du Chatelet and Ensemble Ader in Paris. The second piece is for guitar and live electronics, commissioned by Svenska Rikskonserter and Mårten Falk.

The village Nzuleso, built on stilts on Amanzule Lake (west Ghana), in the area where the sound material for the piece Amanzule Voices was recorded.

Whirl of Leaves (2006) for flute and harp was commissioned by Svenska Rikskonserter for Camilla Hoitenga and Héloïse Dautry. The piece was composed using a rule-based computer system during the composition process. Musical structures where designed by defining strict relationships between pitch, rhythm and the metric framework.

Magma (1999/2000), written for the Swedish Radio Symphony orchestra, is based on a long process with violent eruptions.

Amanzule Voices (1998) for cello and live electronics was composed at IRCAM in Paris, and is based on sounds recorded during a trip to Ghana in West Africa.

Research

Many of Sandred's pieces are results of his search for new methods of composition, for example he has experimented with the expression voice-leading harmony can give, i.e. the musical expression based on the harmonic context and the connections between chords, rather than the chords themselves. During 1999 he worked as a Composer on Research in the Musical Representation Team at IRCAM, where he implemented his ideas on methods for working with hierarchical rhythms within metrical systems into a computer system. His work at IRCAM explored the possibility to control rhythm with constraints. The result is available as a library in OpenMusic, a computer program for computer assisted composition.

Since 2004 he has developed a system for computing simultaneous musical constraints for pitch, rhythm and metric framework. A complete musical structure is generated by the system. The composer defines rules for the relationship between musical parameters. Sandred's research focuses on finding what rule-types give composers a flexible control over the musical discourse. The research uses the PWGL visual programming language (specialized in computer assisted composition) as a platform for the software development.

Sandred is a member of the international musical research group PRISMA (Pedagogia e Ricerca Internazionale sui Sistemi Musicali Assistiti). PRISMA is formed by composers and was created inside the Centro Tempo Reale (Florence).

Teaching

Besides his work as a composer, Sandred is teaching composition and electro-acoustic music. 1998 - 2005 he was teaching at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. He has been a guest lecturer at IRCAM in Paris, at Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique in Paris, at Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, at the Bartok Seminar in Szombathely (Hungary), at Harvard University, at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and other places (including all major music conservatories in Sweden). Since 2005 he is a professor in composition at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, where he founded Studio FLAT, s studio for computer music research and production.

As a composer, he has regularly received commissions from Swedish and foreign music institutions. He has worked with ensembles like Kammarorkestern NOW and le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and his music has been performed and broadcast on radio and TV in and outside Sweden.