Born in Lidköping on 24th July 1953. He trained as a photographer 1970-1972 and studied at SAMUS Teacher Education College 1972-1975 and in the Department of Musicology, Gothenburg, where his interest in 20th century was aroused and he came into touch with basic synthesizer equipment and tape-recording techniques. He also studied in Stockholm (The Electronic Music Studio, EMS, and Fylkingen), using advanced equipment. He was the initiator of a research project in the Information Processing and Musicology Departments, to develop software for computerised composition. He has taught theory, ear training and the history of music etc. in the Department of Musicology, Gothenburg University.
Åke Parmerud has been a rock musician and once headed a fifteen man group playing Afro-American music. His first compositions were written for the bands he played in. But it is mainly as a forceful composer of electro-acoustic music and multi-media works (especially, perhaps, picture sequences, in which his photographic skills have come in useful) that he has acquired an international reputation. In Time’s imaginary eye (for soprano, tape and projector), time and the process of ageing are viewed in the light of Einstein’s theory of relativity, and in Floden av glas (shown at the Stockholm Cultural Centre and elsewhere) he has created a brutal multi-media work in a mood of impending doom but also insistence on life. Out of sight his first purely computerised composition, was realised at the EMS and is described by the composer as “a streamlined play of surfaces, stylisations, or if you will simplifications, calculated to obscure the view of the underlying, the complex and unpredictable, the real“.
His expressive music has gained appreciation in Europe at large. Thus both Närheter and Kren earned him prizes at the electronic music competitions in Bourges. In his works he consolidates his position as the most dynamic, uncompromising composer of his generation. He is also much in demand as a sound director for concert performances of electro-acoustic music. SJ