Anders Lundegård
Encyclopedia
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
classical saxophonist. Lundegård is best known for his cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
-like tone and intense performance style.
Anders Lundegård was born in Växjö
Växjö
Växjö is a city and the seat of Växjö Municipality, Kronoberg County, Sweden with 64 200 inhabitants in 2010. It is the administrative, cultural and industrial centre of Kronoberg County. Furthermore it is the episcopal see of the Diocese of Växjö. It has a population of about 64 200, out of a...
, Sweden, and made his debut at seventeen as a soloist and broadcast performer during a youth artist festival in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. He earned his undergraduate degree as a student of Christer Johnsson at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music
Royal College of Music, Stockholm
The Royal College of Music, Stockholm is the oldest institution of higher education in music in Sweden, founded in 1771 as the conservatory of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music...
in Stockholm, whereupon he received both a Fulbright and a Sweden – America Foundation award to continue his studies in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Lundegård completed his Master’s, Certificate of Performance and Doctoral degrees at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
, studying under the renowned saxophonist Frederick Hemke
Frederick Hemke
Frederick L. Hemke is an American saxophonist and Professor of Music at Northwestern University School of Music.-Education:...
. During this time he received three awards, toured with the Swedish chamber orchestra
Swedish Chamber Orchestra
The Swedish Chamber Orchestra is Scandinavia's only full-time professional chamber orchestra. It was established in May 1995 by merging a string orchestra, the Örebro Kammarorkester with a wind ensemble, the Örebro Kammarblåsare...
Musica Vitæ, had several works dedicated to him, and won the Northwestern Solo Concerto Competition, performing the subject of his dissertation: the Lars-Erik Larsson
Lars-Erik Larsson
Lars-Erik Larsson was a notable Swedish composer of the 20th century.-Biography:Lars-Erik Vilner Larsson was born in Åkarp in 1908...
Saxophone Concerto.
Lundegård has taught (most recently at West Chester University) and toured extensively in Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
and America, performing contemporary chamber, Baroque transcriptions and Classical concerti. As a young musician, he claims to have been inspired by an anecdote from the saxophone’s early experimental stages in the 1850s. During an informal visit to the Belgian inventor, Adolph Sax’s, sweatshop, the Italian composer Gioachino Rossini proclaimed the sound of the new instrument as "the most tender and pleasing he had ever heard." Lundegård professed goal is to capture this "original sound," and he is particularly known for his solo recitals on alto and soprano sax, which include Bach Cello Suites (played at the original pitch) as well as Lundegård’s own compositions.
Performances and recordings
Lundegård's recent performances incorporate transcriptions of classical standard repertoire originally composed for strings and clarinet, as well as newly commissioned works. His performances of Astor Piazolla and Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
have been well received, as well as his premieres of new works by various Belgian and American composers. He toured Sweden in 2006 and performed for the U.S. State Department and the French Embassy in 2007, among others.