Musical Spring Salon – from Song to Opera

Welcome to a spring concert with John Erik Eleby’s Chamber Choir, presenting a programme where jazz meets song, Romanticism and opera – full of both familiar favourites and unexpected turns.

The repertoire moves freely between the Swedish choral tradition, jazz-inflected colours and Romantic choral lyricism. The evening includes several arrangements from The Real Group’s repertoire as well as works with literary sources, where words and music are closely intertwined. William Shakespeare is represented through Bengt Hallberg’s Concerto for Piano and Mixed Choir No. 2, in which the language of jazz encounters the choral sound world, performed together with the pianist Johan Ullén. The programme also features gems from the Romantic repertoire, including Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.

Opera takes its natural place with music from Bizet’s Carmen, performed with the mezzo-soprano Katija Dragojevic, a regular guest on stages such as La Scala, Covent Garden and the Royal Swedish Opera.

The concert is conducted by John Erik Eleby, who trained at the Royal College of Music and the Stockholm University of the Arts and is active as a soloist at the Royal Swedish Opera. His chamber choir, founded in 2012, is renowned for its refined work with sound and its unusually wide-ranging artistic repertoire.