Born in Stockholm on 14th September 1958, son of Maurice Karkoff. He studied orchestration with Gunnar Johansson and counterpoint, privately, with Valdemar Söderholm. He studied composition with Gunnar Bucht at the Stockholm College of Music, 1978-1982 and electronic music there with Pär Lindgren. Lessons received from Visiting Professor Brian Ferneyhough 1980-1982 also meant a great deal to him. In the autumn of 1983 he began studying the teaching of musical theory. He has also been a frequent contributor to Nutida Musik, Dagens Nyheter (music reviews), etc.
Ingvar Karkoff stands out among the young generation of composers, trained during the second half of the 1970s, by virtue of his eminent awareness of composition techniques and the stylistic breadth of his imagination. His formal patterns are imaginative and well thought-out. Emotionally and in terms of musical analysis he has profited a great deal from the music of Gustav Mahler, and his Texture for orchestra (1979) is a tribute but also an effort to probe the depths of the orchestral language of the late Romantic period. No less vital than his familiarity with the Western tradition is his open-mindedness towards the music of other cultures, e.g. African, Latin American and reggae. Where rhythm is concerned, he frequently employs dense and exciting chains, as for example in one of his latest works, Rhythms for drums and recorded tape (1983). The breadth of these influences, his sense of contrast and his proficiency in applying technical know-how to the processing of individual ideas make him one of the most interesting composers of his generation.

H-G P. Photo Lars Torndahl

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