Sebastian Fagerlund

Fagerlund has said: “A sort of primitivism is present in many of my works. As a result, rhythm, in particular, has become very important. I am fascinated by relentless drive and energy.”. Salient features of Fagerlund’s music are his interest in large-scale forms and details of them, and a profound view of music as the expresser of fundamental questions and existential experiences.

Fagerlund's 2017 opera Autumn Sonata, with a libretto by the composer and Gunilla Hemming, based on the 1979 film by Ingmar Bergman was premiered at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki conducted by John Storgårds with Anne Sofie von Otter created the principal role of Charlotte.

Fagerlund was the Composer in Residence of The Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam season 2016/17 and in 2018 was the invited guest composer at the Aspen Music Festival.

Together with clarinettist Christoffer Sundqvist, Fagerlund is Artistic Director of the RUSK Chamber Music Festival they founded in Jakobstad, Finland in 2013.

The Clarinet Concerto (2006) steeped in colour marked a turning point in Fagerlund’s career as a composer. Like a trek through areas that all sound different, a series of sensations, it reinforced his status as one of the leading Finnish composers. The alternation of darkness and light, of movement and motionlessness, of violence and sensitivity, permeates the tone poem Isola (Island, 2007), another major orchestral work. Both works were premiered at the Korsholm Music Festival. His surrealistic chamber opera Döbeln (2009) constructed around hallucinations won the Record of the Year award of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) and was a commission from the West Coast Opera Kokkola. The orchestral Ignite (2010), constructed like a spiral, has fired audiences the world over. The Violin Concerto Darkness in Light inhabiting the zone between dream and reality was tailored for Pekka Kuusisto and was immensely successful when premiered in Tampere in September 2012. The concerto was partly inspired by the literature of Haruki Murakami. The dreamy guitar concerto Transit (2013) commissioned by Yle and premiered by Ismo Eskelinen has continued Fagerlund’s series of concertos.

Fagerlund was born in Pargas. He began his musical studies with violin lessons at the Turku Conservatory, where his teacher was Simo Vuoristo. After a year spent studying in the Netherlands, he applied for the Sibelius Academy to study composition and graduated from the class of Erkki Jokinen in 2004. He has also attended master classes with Michael Jarrell, Magnus Lindberg, Ivan Fedele and others.

Sebastian Fagerlund (born 6 December 1972) is a Finnish composer. He is described as “a post-modern impressionist whose sound landscapes can be heard as ecstatic nature images which, however, are always inner images, landscapes of the mind”. Echoes of Western culture, Oriental music and heavy metal may, for example, all be detected under the same Sky in the music of Fagerlund.