KENT OLOFSSON was born in Karlskrona in 1962. He is mainly associated with chamber music, often written for instruments in combination with electronics - meticulous compositions that evolve out of a close collaboration with particular musicians and ensembles. Himself a guitarist - he began his musical career in the symphonic rock group Opus Est in the late 1970s and early 1980s before studying composition in Malmö between 1984 and 1991 - the guitar has taken on a central role in many of his works. A notable example is the grandiose "Il Liuto d’Orfeo" for guitar and tape, an intricate and singularly wistful piece specially composed for fellow guitarist Stefan Östersjö. The work took home first prize in the 1999 International Competition for Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, France.

Otherwise of note amongst his series of works centring on certain aspects of sound and technology are the provocative pieces for solo instrument. All works in the series are titled "Treccia" (lattice-work), which betrays the aesthetic and the compositional methods he probes here. In fact Olofsson has written music in most genres - orchestral, solo concerto, vocal, electroacoustic, rock (he writes for the art rock band Dame Wiggens, with which he is also the guitarist) - and has composed music drama works, music for art exhibitions, and music for dance performances with choreographer Efva Lilja's dance company - notably "The Illuminated Dream Aflame" from 2001, a mammoth production at the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, which was watched by over 7,000 visitors.

With titles and themes that allude to the conceptual world of antiquity, and with influences from Oriental music and the technical and tonal universe of the renaissance, Olofsson traverses wide expanses. The relative technical complexity is often parried with a surprising immediacy born of his confident ear for acoustic texture and for the purely human experience of tonal transmutation. This "psychoacoustic" sensitivity lends his music, without compromise, the ability to get intimately close to the listener.

Kent Olofsson also works as a teacher at the Malmö Academy of Music.

Tony Lundman, 2003
English translation: Neil Betteridge


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