World's a Stage

The seven parts of this suite are composed according to the way an oldfashioned Broadway musical is structured, as a tribute to Porter, Gershwin, Hammerstein and all those classic Broadway composers. Each piece is also dedicated to a composer and/or musician who for various reasons have meant a lot to me musically. The suite also marks my love for big bands, which goes back a long way, from when I danced as a teenager to Gugge Hedrenius' big band in Stockholm in the 80's. 2023 is the 30th anniversary of my first album Close (an album recorded by the same sound engineer as this one, the brilliant Åke Linton). I look back on these years with pride and joy, but also with some sentimentality. Thirty years, that is after all, my whole life as an adult with all the experiences a life can contain; happiness, disasters, births and deaths, and everything in between, as Shakespeare wrote "All the world's a stage, and all men and women but players". That is also what I have tried to encompass in this suite; a piece performed with brilliance, warmth and commitment by the fantastic Bohuslän Big Band with whom I have had the honor of being Composer in Residence in 2022-23. Lina Nyberg