Bringing Light Into the Darkness
Setting: Brass Band
Year of composition: 2019
Premiered: Will premiere October 26, 2020, Salvation Army, Södertälje, Sweden.
Duration: 9’

Composer’s note
In 2019 I got the opportunity to write a new piece for the Salvation Army brass band in Södertälje. The goal was a piece that would be modern and a bit challenging compared to their everyday repertoire. Since the band mainly consists of talented amateurs and a small number of professional musicians, they wished for it to not be too difficult technically and not too challenging from an aesthetical point of view.

At the same time as I started working on the piece, I listened to rock guitarist Carlos Santana say “a musician is someone who brings light into the darkness”. I thought it was a beautiful and poetic description of an artist’s role and I decided to name the work after this quote. I hope the title of the work opens up to different interpretations depending on who the listener is and where he or she is on his or her own journey through life.

Musically, what attracted me with the brass band was the compact and homogeneous sound that I think makes this orchestral form so unique. Usually percussion plays a very important role in a modern brass band and so in this piece. But instead of mainly using percussion for markings and orchestration of strong sections, I have tried to integrate and merge the percussion sounds with the rest of the orchestra.

I am not a poet but I think you can see the piece as a journey across our inner sea. We experience many calm but also turbulent waves during the piece. It alternates between light and darkness during the journey. Thankfully we will finally end up coming back home, but with the experiences and memories we gathered during the trip. Hopefully, these experiences will allow us to let some more light into our own darkness.