The Perfect Working Holiday: The Skallsjö Sommarorkester

It all started with the double problem of what to do in the summer and how to get together with your friends. And, to compound it, you have to practice. Violinist Carl Vallin, now Artistic Director, and conductor and bassist Gustav Wetterbrandt came up with the idea of the Summer Orchestra. Everyone gets together to play, to see what their friends are playing, and to make music together. Even better, they decided to take their new orchestra on the road and play for orchestra-less communities in western Sweden that could use some summer music.

Interlude recently spoke with Kate De Campos, violist, about the orchestra, their new recording, and all the other things the orchestra gets up to.

Skallsjö Sommarorkester in 2024

The orchestra was founded in 2013 and has been highly successful, getting funding through trusts, scholarships, and partnerships of all kinds to support their varied programming. It’s not just about getting the music together and concertizing, but also about finding new music through SICC (the Skallsjö International Composing Competition) and commissioning new works, such as Syldaviska Danser by Johan Ullén, created to celebrate the Orchestra’s 10^th Anniversary in 2023.

As the members have gone from being 15-year-old high school students to finishing conservatory and finding professional jobs, the orchestra has developed. The orchestra grew (it’s now 22 members), and some former members have come back to work with the orchestra on other projects.

The first year, the repertoire was Mendelssohn, Glazunov, Sibelius, and Nielsen with a clarinet concerto by Baerman and was expanded in their second concert to Elgar, Genzmer, and Respighi. Already by their second year, they were making a music video of the Holberg Suite, filmed on the streets, malls, and surroundings of Gothenberg, Sweden.

Skallsjö Sommarorkester Plays Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Op. 40

The following years saw more concerts, always with a strong classical core, and a new music video (2015: Celloman; 2016: Dancing the Dargason). The number of concerts expanded from 3 in the first year to 6 in the fourth year, with the dates creeping out of summer to include concerts in March and September. In 2021, they did a live-stream (Streaming in the Rain) and started the Evolution Music Festival. That year, the winner of the 2020 SICC, Maciej Bałenkowski, had his winning work, Sinfonietta No. 2, “Polonia”, performed. A COVID-era concert had the orchestra in a hall and the audience outside on chairs, maintaining the necessary distancing.

Their first recording, Glöden (The Glow), issued by the Swedish Society label, proved to be a gathering of works that they loved, which were not works that were in the general repertoire.

Maciej Bałenkowski’s Sinfonietta No. 2, “Polonia”, was the opening track. Followed by Johan Ullén’s Syldavian Dances, a wonderful imagining of what the folk music would be like in Tintin’s mythical country of Syldavia (King Ottakar’s Sceptre), where Tintin meets the singer Bianca Castafiore (known for her penetrating rendition of The Jewel Song from Gounod’s Faust).

Niedzdrow in Syldavia in <em>King Ottakar’s Sceptre</em>

Niedzdrow in Syldavia in King Ottakar’s Sceptre

The players come from all over Sweden, with one additional player from Slovenia and another from the UK, and all celebrate their youth. Since they’re all roughly the same age, they have many commonalities to discuss in terms of music, career development, outrageous teacher demands, and life in general. In their 10^th Anniversary book, readable on their website, members comment on the ways that the orchestra is different from their regular orchestras. Orchestra members can have regular orchestral appointments or be freelance musicians, but all make space in their schedules for the two-and-a-half weeks of Sommarorkester time. The 2025 season began with rehearsals on 13 July before the first concert on 16 July. This year’s summer tour includes an appearance in Germany and Luxembourg.