Composer Staffan Biorklund-Jullander writes of his new album: “All music (except Bellman) on this [album] is either improvised or composed by me. Part in a freer form, others with a more solid structure. As a bonus, there is an arrangement of the first movement from Mozart’s Symphony no. 40, which I did for choir and piano. My relationship to the art of improvisation has, over the years as a musician, followed me like a shadow. It has always been there, I used to say: I play from scores just for a living, but as an improviser I work as an artist. I also have divided my musical life in two parts: as a soloist, (where I improvise a lot) and as an accompanist, when it is very practical to use scores, of course. But as mentioned, my real “I” does not belong to the world of written music, unless I compose music myself. Then this will have another importance for me. My entire musical history is about the polarization of improvisation versus scored music. I cannot live without the notes, but yet feel that improvisations are suppressed by scored music…”

Torsten Mossberg writes of his new release: “For this album, I have chosen both popular literary songs and ballads, from the middle ages until the present day. The early songs were released as broadsides, also mentioning which melody that could be used. More recent songs and ballads are often literary and were published with melodies in songbooks and song collections of individual songwriters. Those songs referring to hymns have their numbering taken from Den svenska psalmboken 1986 [The Swedish Hymn Book 1986].” Torsten Mossberg is a physician, specializing in anesthesiology and intensive care. He studied singing with Ester Ruhrsetiz, Eva Pilat and Bjorn Thulin, and has extensive experience as a choir singer. He has a broad repertoire, from ballads to romances and cabaret songs, and has released several albums of rarely recorded songs by Swedish composers.