ANDERS ELIASSON was born in Borlänge on the 3rd April, 1947. From 1966 to 1972 he was a student at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, studying composition with Ingvar Lidholm and harmony and counterpoint with Valdemar Söderholm. He was a member of the Electronic Music Studio Foundation’s artistic committee from 1972 to 1973. During 1993 and 1994 he was q quest professor in composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. He received the City of Stockholm Arts Award in 1973, the Christ Johnson Prize in 1977 and 1983, the newspaper Expressen’s music award ”Spelmannen” in 1987 and the City of Stockholm Honorary Award in 1994. In 1992 his Symphony No 1. was awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize.

” In a succession of chamber compositions during the 1970s Anders Eliasson developed his grasp of the basic elements of music: intensity, airiness, tension, relaxation, density, incisiveness and darkness. He composed a music of great emotional tension, often nervously feverish, with a remarkable sharpness of nuance and contrast. He evolved a complex language with distinct tonal fields of gravitation and – in the time dimension – with physically palpable patterns and movements. His music is written by hand and its impact is often instantaneous. The identity of his works is based partly on the use of different modes, the structure of which tends to rest on strict regularity (governed, for example, by series of prime numbers). He himself, though, refers to his respect for the ”angel of music”, i.e. the difference between the explicable and the inexplicable in music.”
Göran Bergendal