Last Friday we played with Fabulous Five in Grünewaldsalen (the Grünewald hall) at Stockholm Concert Hall (Stockholms Konserthus). The concert series is called soppkonserter, soup concerts, and is a very nice event. The audience arrives, have a soup, and for dessert a concert is served, this time the very tasty Fabulous Five (Ooh, I’m clever today). All seats for eating guests were sold out, and also lot’s of people were sitting on the balcony, where you could sit if you didn’t want to eat.

We had a blast playing this gig, and it felt like a really good concert. As a bonus, the acoustics were amazing! We never had better sound, everyone heard each other exceptionally well, and this without any monitors or micing except for the concert grand piano, which by the way was the best instrument that Rasmus ever had the pleasure of playing on.

We only had 5 records left from the last pressing, and they were sold immediately. Sadly enough, there were many more who wanted to buy a record, that had to go home empty-handed. Of course this was a bit unfortunate, but still a good review for us!

It really was a pleasure to meet and play with the band again, last time was in the end of May I think. Since then I have, which you may have noticed, moved to Vienna and Ludwig to Los Angeles, so it really was great seeing everyone again!

Now I’m soon home in Sweden again, I’m really looking forward to it! On Friday we play with Fabulous Five at Stockholm Concert Hall (Stockholms Konserthus). The concert series is called soppkonserter, soup concerts, and are lunch concerts where you can enjoy some nice music together with a soup if I have understood everything correctly. Will whatsoever be very nice to meet and play with these guys again!

On Thursday the week after we’re playing with Jerry the Cupboard at hotel Hellsten, which I’m also looking forward to! Also nice that I get a little more than a week in Stockholm in between the gigs, plenty of time to meet friends, do some jam sessions and say hello to the city again.

I’m flying cheap with Ryanair from Bratislava tomorrow at 16.35, I hope I will manage to take the right bus here in Vienna. Vienna is undeniable very well located in Europe, it is very easy to travel to many nice city’s from here. Suits me very well tomorrow, since Ryanair don’t fly directly from Vienna, at least not to Stockholm (Read Skavsta, 90 min with bus from Stockholm).

Yesterday I were out shopping Christmas gifts. My plan was to have that done and bring some presents to the family from here, but I only managed to find some stuff for Julia. I guess I have to go shopping some in Stockholm too. Julia and I decided to have our Christmas gift distribution yesterday evening, today we don’t have any time for that. We had a really nice time, eating Christmas-sushi (regular sushi but on the Christmas gift distribution-evening) and giving each other presents. Really nice!

Now I have to work a little before my last school day before Christmas. I’ll get back to ya.

Swedish newspaper Corren published today a small article about the concert of Fabulous Five that’s broadcasted in the Swedish Radio P2’s show Club Jazz tonight, Friday, at 10pm. The article you find here!

OK, time to bring out your calendars! September 14th at 10pm it is time to tune in to Swedish Radio P2 and the show Club Jazz. More specific, this is when they broadcast the concert of Fabulous Five, which we did at jazz club Fasching in Stockholm earlier this year. Would be a pity to miss, could be fun! I think the show will be available on the Internet for a month after the show, if you can’t catch it “live”. I’ll get back to you on this.

This morning we rehearsed with Thomas Backman’s band Jerry The Cupboard, with which we’re gonna have our premiere gig the 11th of September at Glenn Miller Café in Stockholm. I think it will be a really nice concert, the rehearsal was a blast! Great when you feel that the music begins to find it’s right shape.

Tomorrow morning at 06:30am my train leaves from Stockholm central station to Karlstad, I hope I wake up! We’re rehearsing the whole Friday, then we play at the festival sometime during Saturday. I’m looking forward to it!

I have uploaded a sound clip from one of the tunes from the Fasching gig with Fabulous Five on my myspace. The tune is called Abstrakt Boskap, is written by Rasmus Borg and recorded by Swedish Radio P2. Now you know, listen if you feel like it.

After a two weeks long sailing trip in Croatia and two weeks in Austria, I’m now back in Stockholm. I’m gonna put together some pictures from these four weeks and report a little about it eventually.

During the trip I got the notice that I’ve been accepted to the Music University of Vienna, which means that I’m moving there for an exchange year that starts the 1st of October. I’m gonna stay in Sweden to the end of September. It’s really exciting to move there and live together with Julia, but at the same time a bit scary; leaving all friends, bands and things like that for something you don’t know how it’s gonna be. But it will probably be alright, I hope I find some nice people to play with there as well!

Yesterday me and some friends went to see The Simpsons Movie, it was great! They have really succeeded making a stand-alone movie that stands out from the series but still with the Simpsons-felling intact, and most important: It was hillarious! As a nerdy saxophone player I couldn’t resist reflecting over if Lisa’s tenor sax usually sounds like a baritone sax in the theme song, but in the movie it sounded like a tenor sax. I think.

I found a funny page, simpsonizeme.com, where you can upload a photo and see how yourself would look as a Simpson character. To the left you can see how I would look.

For the computer interested I can tell you that now when I’m home I have started to rebuild my page a bit. I’m trying to build it completely in Wordpress, which is the platform this blog is based upon. I’m doing this to be able to easier maintain and update the page where ever I’m located in the world, and to get rid of all separate scripts for every different function on the page. More precisely to gather everything in one place. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m a bit nervous about going to school and practice, I have hardly played for a month now and now how hard it’s gonna be to start again. But now it’s time to get going again, gigs are coming up.

I’m finishing this post off with a video from Fabulous Five’s gig at Fasching in May, a concert that will be broadcasted in Swedish Radio P2 this autumn. Unfortunately I’m not too pleased with my own playing in the video, but if you cover your ears during the saxophone solo, you can always enjoy the rest. Or something. To hear more of the music of Fabulous Five you can visit Fabulous Five Myspace.

I’ve finally moved back into my apartment again. I still don’t have a bathroom and no running water so toilet and shower visits are taken care of in a barrack in the yard, and water I’m fetching from a tap in the stairway (only cold water). Annoying of course, but still nice to once again live where all my stuff are. Mum and dad where so very nice and came up for a day and helped me clean away all building dust and organize everything again.

The fact that I haven’t lived at home is off course the biggest reason to why I haven’t been writing here lately, combined with lot’s to do and the last days splendid weather!

We’ve had to really nice gigs with Fabulous Five since the last time I wrote here, one at Jazzclub Fasching in Stockholm and one at the Culture House in Trelleborg. The Fasching gig was recorded by Swedish Radio P2 and will be broadcasted sometime this autumn. It was a nice evening with a big audience and I think it was our best gig so far! I’m looking forward to hear the recording, I hope it reflects how it felt in a good way, you never know when it comes to recordings.

The gig in Trelleborg was also very nice. We went there the same day, which resulted in seven and a half hours in the car and arrival an hour before the gig. Despite the long trip the gig was really sweet. At first we were a bit chocked by the acoustics, the sealing was very high and the room was pretty big; you probably can’t come closer to a concert in a bathhouse without actually being in a bathhouse. It felt like we dealt with it in a pretty good way though, even if our sound most probably was more diffuse and blurry than it usually is. Afterwards we were invited to a wonderful dinner and some beers at the home of Rasmus family, where we also spent the night. It became a really nice evening, like it always does with this gang. In addition we also had the company of our hosts, Rasmus parents, who offered great food, nice company and comfortable sleeping places! Thank you so much! The next day We didn’t need to be in Stockholm any certain time, so after breakfast we went to the ocean where Gustav were the true Viking of the band and took a swim. The trip continued on to Hässleholm where we dropped of Daniel, which in that moment moved back to Skåne (south of Sweden) for a while, and also out of the apartment him and me have shared this year. It was a bit sad, extra much considering that the band now will be split up for a year. Ludwig is moving to Los Angeles to study film music and I have applied for exchange studies in Vienna, even if I haven’t had any notification yet.

The day after our return to Stockholm I had my term examinations. I had lots of pains in my body after 1500 kilometers of car traveling in two days and had a really hard time focusing. This must have been my worst term exam ever, but I’ve done it anyway.

Now the summer has started, and I’m doing my best to take it as easy as possible, but I have some rests I have to start dealing with so I don’t have to think about that anymore. In a week Julia finally comes here, I really long for her! Now I’m gonna go sit on the balcony and wait until I get hungry, feels like a good summer activity!

* * * * *
Mattias Andréasson, or dmaSOUL, have uploaded a great song that I’m playing on. The song is called Spend My Days and you find it at his myspace.

* * * * *
What a round of La Liga! Messi once again copies Maradona, Van Nistelrooy is always in the right spot, Beckham shows once again what a fighter he is. Limp like that and still fight like crazy and deliver freekick after freekick and corner after corner with millimeter precision. Real Madrid takes it this year, they won’t loose against Mallorca at home.

* * * * *
Mjölby Södra leads the 5th division, the return train is speeding up!

* * * * *
Every gig so far have been canceled at my “summer job”. I’m starting to loose hope about my fixed summer income. We’ll see how it develops.

Now Fabulous Five’s gig at Great Jazz Club in Linköping is also reviewed (in Swedish) by newspaper Linköpingsposten. Maybe I should learn to stand still when i play…

When we played with Fabulous Five at Great Jazz Club in Linköping the photographer Jan Perneros was there and took some photos. He sent over these pictures and I thought it could be nice to share them with you. Big thank you Jan!

We were in Linköping and played with Fabulous Five at Great Jazz Club yesterday, a good concert. We tried some new material and, with a good result, also some new strategies concerning big form thinking and the structure of songs. For my part I had a bit of a hard time focusing in the beginning of the concert, we had a litte to less time for warming up, eating and soundcheck before. When the concert was about to start, we were still eating, but the academic quarter saved us I guess. It felt a bit odd though, one second we were eating and the next we were on stage. I like to have a moment by myself before I go up, but there was no time for that this time.

Newspaper Corren, or Östgöta Correspondenten, wrote a nice review (in Swedish) with the title Charmig och kunnig kvintett (Charming and skilled quintet). Enjoy!