Magnus Granberg
The Willow Bends and So Do I

An hour-long ensemble piece from 2024, recorded in Stockholm.

Skogen

Anna Lindal violin

Eva Lindal violin

Leo Svensson Sander cello

Finn Loxbo acoustic steel string guitar

Stina Hellberg Agback harp

Magnus Granberg prepared piano & composition

Erik Carlsson percussion

Henrik Olsson objects, contact microphones, thumb piano

Petter Wästberg contact microphone, mixing board, loudspeaker

Interview with Magnus Granberg

Can you tell us about this composition?  What does the title refer to? And from what pieces of music have you derived material for the piece?

The piece was written in spring 2024 and basically consists of four large pools of materials as well as a temporal framework in which the four different pools are ordered into a total of ten cycles, the duration of each cycle being approximately six minutes. Each pool consists of individual sounds, a number of short phrases (each containing two to seven different sounds) as well as an eighteen bar melody in slightly shifting meters from which the performers can choose what and when to play in accordance with a set of guidelines which accompany the individual parts.

The phrases are derived from a small series of tiny rhythmic modules in very simple note values as well as their augmentations and diminutions, whereas the tonal materials all are derived from a few bars from a song by American jazz and film music composer Johnny Mandel called ’A Time for Love’, from which the piece also borrows its title. I first heard the song in my mid teens on ’Alone’, a solo piano album by jazz pianist Bill Evans which was recorded and released in the late 1960s, and which must have been one of the very first CDs that I bought in the very late eighties. There are actually quite a lot more raw materials which I wrote at the time but which I didn’t use for this piece but rather intended to be employed in what eventually might become a small family of pieces for various kinds of settings and ensembles. A first (or perhaps rather second) realisation taking this larger pool of materials as its point of departure is a piece which I wrote for the lovely American string duo andPlay, which was premiered and toured earlier this summer along with a new piece for Angharad Davies.

The ensemble on the new CD is relatively large (9 players). Was there a reason for that, and does it change anything in the way you compose when the performing group is larger?

Well, I think the main reason for writing for this comparatively large ensemble was quite simply that I wanted to gather all the Swedish friends and members of the ensemble, including those players who started to play with Skogen during the pandemic (or perhaps rather during those periods during the pandemic when it was possible meeting up a few people doing something at least) with the addition of guitarist Finn Loxbo whom we and I also had worked with on a couple of different occasions lately. But it’s of course also a question of really enjoying writing for and playing with a relatively large ensemble of this kind, of being part of a musical environment consisting of so many different voices, movements, timbres and temperaments and the particular sense of fulfilment which it brings. As for the question whether anything changes when I write for somewhat larger ensembles, that quite often depends on the schooling and experiences of the members of the ensemble. In this particular instance, where the musicians all have plenty of experience improvising and playing open scores, my writing doesn’t differ very much when writing for a smaller or somewhat larger ensemble, but if I were to write for other kinds of ensembles where the different members had less experience with these ways of working, I would probably limit the amount of materials and choices to a certain extent. And in some cases I also write pieces which are more or less fixed, for example the piece I recently wrote for andPlay, which is a violin & viola duo. I guess it’s sometimes quite simply a matter of what is practical doing when working with particular musicians but of course also a matter of exploring and examining various kinds of musical dynamics.

This particular version of Skogen is all Swedish, and includes two or three players who are relatively new to the ensemble, alongside several Skogen regulars. Is there now a pool of  local musicians keen to play with Skogen?

There is a handful of relative newcomers on this recording, though a couple of them like violinist Eva Lindal (who also happens to be the sister of longtime Skogen member Anna Lindal) and harpist Stina Hellberg Agback have been playing with us since the pandemic,  - so were both on ’How Lonely Sits the City?’ which was recorded in 2021 and released on Another Timbre the following year. Eva and Stina are both such great and versatile musicians with experiences from so many different fields of music, including early and new music as well as improvised and experimental musics of various kinds. As for guitarist Finn Loxbo we had first worked together on a double album (’Night Will Fade and Fall Apart’) which was released on the Swedish record label Thanatosis in 2022, and Finn also joined Skogen for the music which I wrote for director Karl Dunér’s production of The Persians and The Women of Troy, which was staged at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm in 2023. Finn is a wonderful and very exciting musician (for example with his brilliant ensemble Kommun) whose playing I have admired for a number of years, so I’m very happy to have him with us.

As for the question whether there is a pool of Swedish musicians keen to play with Skogen I must say that I don’t really know! But I do know that there are quite a few brilliant young players here in Stockholm that I myself really would like to work with more at some point, people like violinist Maya Bennardo, kecapi player and composer Kristofer Svensson, percussionist Ryan Packard and double bassist Vilhelm Bromander, just to name a few. I’m very happy for and curious and excited about all the new musicians and composers that are becoming part of the scene, and I really hope to find ways of collaborating with as many of them as possible at some point, in one form or the other.