Staffan Storm
STAFFAN STORM was born in Karlskrona on the 16th March, 1964. He began studying arranging/composition and music theory at the Malmö College of Music in 1986, after which he continued to study composition until 1992. His main teachers were Rolf Martinsson and Hans Gefors, but he also studied with Bent Sørensen and Trevor Wishart. In addition he has taken part in various composition courses, in particular the course at the Centre Acanthes in Avignon, France and the international summer courses for new music in Darmstadt. In this context the composer himself emphasises the significance that his contacts with Elliott Carter, Harrison Birtwistle and Brian Ferneyhough have had for his views on composing.
A music critic once described Staffan Storm’s music as “imaginative, sometimes brutal and hammering, sometimes evasive.” The character of the music can vary from work to work: in the early orchestral work De Profundis (1988), for example, the links with late romanticism are obvious, ”a final proof of maturity”, as one music critic described it. In Förvittrad Sfinx (“Crumbling Sphinx”) (1990) the music follows the text closely in Renaissance style and is rich in melismas, while Abschattung (1997) is characterised by a kind of pure, strangely floating, yet coherent, music.
Staffan Storm works with a variety of compositional techniques, which allow room both for intuitive ideas – the rhythmic vitality has attracted attention, among other things – and strictly structured processes. The music is expressive in character with a characteristically clear disposition, and is firmly anchored in the Western art music tradition. Works by Storm have been performed at several UNM (Young Nordic Music) festivals and also at the Swedish Music Spring Festival and the Contemporary Music Days in Malmö. His music has also been performed at the Gaudeamus festival in Amsterdam and in Darmstadt.
At present Staffan Storm divides his time between composing and various teaching assignments. Since 1993 he has taught music history and music theory at the Malmö College of Music, as well as at the musicology department at Lund University.
Photo Lars Torndahl