Britta Byström


Britta Byström is a Swedish classical composer who specializes in orchestral music but has also composed vocal music and opera. In 2015, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra honoured her as the winner of the Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award for Female Composers.

Biography

Born on 14 March 1977 in Sundsvall, western Sweden, Britta Byström was not raised in a musical family but became interested in music at the age of 10 when she began to play the trumpet. After writing tunes for the trumpet, she started to compose for an orchestra made up of her teenage friends. By the time she was 16, she had won a competition with the Umeå Symphony Orchestra.
She was admitted to study composition at the Royal Swedish College of Music in 1995, under Pär Lindgren and Bent Sørensen, graduating in 2001. She has since composed some 70 works, some of which have been performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. Some of her compositions have been concertos for soloists such as the Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth or the Swedish violist Ellen Nisbeth.
She was inducted into The Swedish Association of Women Composers on June 16, 2010, but does not hold a membership card because she refuses to make a statement as part of a collective and believes women composers should be able to support themselves without the help of KVAST.
Several of Byström's works have attracted particular attention. Der Vogel der Nacht was inspired by Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony. It was first performed by the Swedish Radio Orchestra in 2010. The tone poem Picnic at Hanging Rock, described by Byström as "music with disappearance", received the Christ Johnsen prize in 2012, while A Walk After Dark, a viola concerto, earned the Da-capo award at the 2014 Brandenburger Biennale. In 2016, she composed Many, Yet One for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. It is to be performed in January 2018.
Byström's CD album Invisible Cities, featuring the Swedish Symphony Orchestra and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra as well as the viola player Ellen Nisbeth, has been well received both in Sweden and internationally.

List of compositions