This summer I wrote an organ piece to the swedish organist Larsåke Sjöstedt. My idea was right from the start to deal with the issue of ethnic and cultural openness. As I was working with the piece the topic of racism and ethnic discrimination (again) came into the spotlight in a major way with the terrible mass murder in Norway. That of course only strenghtened my initial purpose. Today Larsåke and I got time to go through the piece. It went very well. We found some nice registrations, and what I heard corresponded to my mental “sound-image” of the piece. To create an extra context for the piece in the purpose of giving the main context of ethnic and cultural openness an additional weight, the piece utilises six different sources from the music literature. My own view is that I use these sources in much the same way that for instance Picasso used references to famous paintings by e.g. Velázquez, Delacroix and Manet to create original pieces of art.

Picasso - "Luncheon on the Grass. After Manet", 1961.

To emphasize the point of openness I have decided to give the piece a creative commons license and upload it to my account at IMSLP.