Seven years ago today, I recorded my piece Lacrimosa with its two dedicatees, organist Per Brudsten and cellist Ronja Schneider, at Härnösand Cathedral. The composition has become a mainstay at the cathedral’s memorial services ever since Per and Ronja premiered it in 2016. The recording session also lives on in the lives of me and my fiancée in an unusual way.
After setting up in the cathedral, rehearsing and doing a sound check, all three of us decided to break for dinner. Per and Ronja, if I remember correctly, went out for pizza while I joined my not-yet-fiancée at home. The two of us discussed what to make for dinner: it had to be filling, as well as not take too long to prepare. I casually suggested making oatmeal.
“OATMEAL?!” my partner exclaimed, incredulously.
Indeed, we ended up making, well, a meal out of oatmeal. The evening recording session at the cathedral went really well and the end result has been available to listen to for a few years now. Ever since, me and my fiancée have (very informally) recognised November 4th as “oatmeal-for-dinner-day”. It certainly will not live in infamy, but at least the two of us are having fun, and that has to count for something, right?
Three years ago, I spontaneously recorded a music video of sorts for Lacrimosa in the region where I live, after randomly being struck by inspiration while out on a walk at sunset. I discussed the filming briefly in a blog post back in November 2021, ahead of the digital single release. Lacrimosa is available for streaming and purchase on Spotify, Apple Music/iTunes Store, Amazon Music and YouTube Music.
You can also watch the video on YouTube:
This past weekend, on All Saints’ Day, Per and I co-conducted the Cathedral Choir during service and then, in the afternoon, he and Ronja played during the cathedral’s two memorial services, including Lacrimosa. It’s a genuine pleasure to work with Per, and to sing under his leadership in the choir. We grew up in the same tradition of choral singing, with similar ideals and ideas and working with him like this is inspiring.
After an intensive work period of finishing my short story opera, this is actually a down period in terms of composition. That does not mean I am at a lack for work, however. In November, I will be giving History of Video Game Music lectures at two folk high schools, perform as tenor soloist in a concert with highlights from Handel’s Messiah, rehearse with the Erik Westberg Vocal Ensemble ahead of a Christmas concert in Sundsvall in December, lead multiple rehearsals with the Cathedral Choir – and most excitingly of all, start planning for next year’s composition projects!
Also, throughout November (and December, and probably into the new year) I will continue renovating the old gathering room for parishioners into what will ultimately become the waiting/dressing room for performing musicians when I start arranging concerts here. This has been part of my initial plan all along, ever since I bought this house five years ago this summer. (I refuse to believe it’s been five years already.)
Really dedicated readers of my blog might already know that back in 2019, I bought an old parish house built in the 1930s, with the aim of not only making it my home but also turning parts of it into a combined concert/recording hall. In other words, the life of a freelance musician not only requires working with music, but it can also require more than a little bit of hard labour, as well as the odd bit of carpentry.
After stripping the walls from most of the old hardboard with my fiancée, I’ve been slowly but surely taking up the old floor, complete with the underlying structure, salvaging as much as possible of the old sawdust for improving isolation up on the attic, and cleaning the crawl space underneath from organic debris.
Working my way through the room is arduous, back-breaking work that I’m pushing myself through. I have a hard deadline one week from today, when I get a load of crushed stone to cover the ground underneath the joists in order to counteract rising moisture from the ground. And that’s only the first part of the renovations.
Before I got my driver’s license, for the longest time I genuinely believed I would never learn how to drive. And then I did.
Before buying this house (and, to be honest, for some time even after I had), I would not have pictured myself as a bona fide handyman. But here I am.
Actually, thinking (way) back to when I was a teenager, I still clearly remember fretting over not knowing how to write pieces longer than a minute or two. That certainly isn’t the case anymore. (Even Lacrimosa, a comparably short piece, is over six minutes!)
