He became a composer but he could equally well have applied himself to the creative art of cooking and become a chef and explorer of raw ingredients and spices. Sten Melin’s approach to composing a dish and to composing a score is basically the same, he closes in on it, he challenges it, he lets himself be taken by surprise and out of this encounter the unexpected is born. A piece by Sten Melin can be so quiet that the audience hardly dares to breathe, or “molto brutale sub. presto possibile”– very brutal and suddenly as fast as possible, as he writes in the musicians’ parts. Nor is he afraid of the bizarre: songs about fibres, for example, or a set of variations for saxophone quartet on the popular song "Upp på källarbacken" ("Källarback Variations", 1993).

But even though his works are enormously varied a common theme spins a thread through them all: his ambition to come to grips with fundamental issues and values – relationships, dissonances, harmonies, alienation, joy, disgust and strength.

Sometimes he starts out from a picture, sometimes from the properties of an instrument, sometimes it’s a feeling, an experience, something that has affected him personally that he expresses in music. And when the piece is finished and he listens to what he has created, it in its turn tells him something which surprises him and which leads on to something new. He hopes that the music will enrich the listener in a similar manner and light a spark of wonder which will live on after the last note has died away.

Anyone who has listened to the tranquil piece "hyssj" ("hush", 1995) for flute and guitar develops a new relationship to noise. After a few minutes with the string quartet "Q is Q" (1983) human conversation appears in a new light.

But Sten Melin also has another side: the practical joker, the trickster, the court jester, who makes sure that the audience doesn’t forget that life is not always deadly serious and music doesn’t always dwell in the realms of High Culture, but can also include light-hearted absurdities and howling hooligans, as in "Seven Heaven" (1998/99).

Despite his experiments with form he would not describe himself as an avant-garde composer. He simply sees himself as one of many who over the ages have tested the limits of music and thereby also human limits. His compositions grow out of a productive dialogue with a long line of musical predecessors.

Born in Kalix on the 10th October 1957, Sten Melin is a trumpeter who turned into a composer. His teachers and inspirers include Gunnar Bucht, Pär Lindgren and Sven-David Sandström. He has written about thirty compositions, ranging from solo pieces to orchestral works, which have been performed throughout the world. Since 2000 Sten Melin has been president of the Society of Swedish Composers and he is also vice-president of STIM, the Swedish Performing Rights Society, and a member of CISAC’s Administrative Council.