Magnus Rosen and cellist Leif Johansson

Small excerpt from Trandans

Music for Electric Bass and Symphony Orchestra

In 2006 a piece for electric bass and orchestra,Trandans, was performed by Magnus Rosén with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. We had decided to do a concert for young people including the heavy metal bass of Magnus Rosén. The orchestra was presented with music by Dvorak, Vivaldi, Beethoven and Shostakovich but it was not easy to find something to play together with electric bass that was not more or less pointless. Arranging hard rock hits for electric bass and orchestra is perhaps not the best of ideas... The decision to write something new felt more interesting.

Magnus and I met to try out ideas and the material was memorized by Magnus ( who doesn't read music ), picking it up as it came along. Two of Rosén's own solo pieces, Bluesman and Gate to Heaven were also featured in new arrangements and later I wrote another piece for Magnus called Slow Sea (wich also exists in a version for windorchestra ). A recording of this music is available from 25 oct 2010:

Link to Naxos presentation

If you want to look at - or even practise - the electric bass part for Trandans, here it is:

Trandans Solo Bass part

Susanna Risberg, Magnus Rosén, Jan Alm Magnus Rosén Magnus Rosén and GSO