The international attention paid to his work Keep the Change, commissioned by Swedish Radio, was well justified. It received its first performance by The Future Ensemble at the ISCM World Music Days in Stockholm 1994. Sten Melin describes his work in this way: 'I spent the summer of 1988 in a small, rented cottage in the village of Lyme Regis on England’s southern coast. The cottage lay next to the church where they practised change-ringing several times a week. It was during this more or less constant noise that I began to think about a new composition. I decided it would build on a change-series for eight bells, the same number as at Lyme Regis.' 'The piece was written in the spring and summer of 1989, the same time as my first child was born ten weeks prematurely. The constant trips between my home and the hospital, my desk and the incubator - this being a parent but lacking the child in the crib, a feeling of unreality that came over me in the midst of this inferno - During this period my life moved in two parallel tempi - one nimbly and rapidly, the other extremely slowly and messily. The inability to separate life and death was never far away, feelings that left deep impressions on Keep the Change.' Rolf Haglund (from PSCD 120) English translation: Sven Borei