From Sweden With Carols: Swedish Musicians Teaming With Liberia Choral Society for X-Mas Concert

Monrovia – The Liberian Academy of Music in collaboration with the Swedish embassy in Monrovia will team up with the Premier Choral Society of Liberia on Thursday to kick off the festive Christmas holidays in what is being dubbed as  an entertaining night of jazz and classical music.

The musicians – Torbjörn Gulz, Erik Lanninger and Sebastian Jonsson will bring years of musical experience, the Swedish embassy in Monrovia hopes will lighten the holiday spirit.

The concert at the First United Methodist Church on Ashmun Street kicks off at 6pm

Gulz is a jazz pianist and has worked as jazz musician for over twenty-five years. He has been touring internationally and nationally with a number of Swedish groups such as Jonas Kullhammar Quartet, Magnus Broo Quartet, Fredrik Norén Band, Jeanette Lindström Quintet and also participat in over thirty recordings. In January 2004 his first CD as a leader “Torbjörn Gulz trio” was released by Moserobie Music Production. Since 1995, Torbjörn teach at the Royal college of Music in Stockholm, where he holds a position as associate professor in piano and jazz theory. He has also written a book on jazz-arranging. Since 2016 he is a PhD student at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), where his research is about improvisation and interaction within jazz.

Lanninger, is a Swedish pianist and senior lecturer in interpretation at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. Since his debut with the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, playing Prokofiev Piano Concerto in C, Erik Lanninger has been a frequently engaged soloist and chamber musician. Erik has toured in Sweden and the Nordic countries, Balticum, Russia, major cities in Western Europé and in the United States of America. He is particularly interested in contemporary music and has explored the repertoire of his ensemble Obscura´s somewhat unusual combination of instruments. Several composers have dedicated new pieces to the group.

Jonsson was born 1996 in Umeå, Västerbotten County, in northern Sweden. His music career started when he began to play alto saxophone in the local music school at age nine. He played in many different local big bands and ensembles during his teenage years and in 2014, he and the band “Thundercat” won the award for best youth jazz band at the Swedish “Jazzfinal” competition. He’s been lucky to be taught and inspired by some of Sweden’s finest saxophonists and teachers, Karl-Martin Almqvist, Robert Nordmark and Fredrik Ljungkvist to name a few. The last three years he’s studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and done a wide array of jazz and big band concerts with bands like “Kustbandet”, “Blue House Jazz Orchestra”, “Glenn Miller Orchestra (Scandinavia)”, “Stockholm Jazz Orchestra” and “Euroradio Jazz Orchestra”. Aside from his jazz performances he often appears in different horn sections, both with pop bands and gospel choirs. Sebastian Jonsson is a composer and bandleader as well and he has written music for many different ensembles, most prominently for his own quintet “Sebastians Kompisar”. Carrying the flag of music Jonsson has traveled to South Africa’s Cape Town in the south and Svalbard’s Longyearbyen in the north, but now visits Liberia for the first time together with Torbjörn Gulz and Erik Lanninger.