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Sven Bjerstedt

Jazz pianist; professor music education (Lund University, Sweden)

About Me

I was born and still live in Malm? in southern Sweden (though my parents told me I was conceptualized in New Orleans). I have been a professional jazz pianist since 1980, working mostly with regional Swedish and Danish groups. Sideman on albums with several bands. In 2013 I released the trio album “Peace” in my own name. As a researcher in music education I have focused on jazz improvisation, for instance in my dissertation, “Storytelling in jazz improvisation” (2014), in the volume “Storytelling in jazz and musicality in theatre: Through the mirror” (Routledge, 2021) and in articles on the role of intention in jazz improvisation. In 2006 I published a biography of the Finnish American composer/musician Einar Swan who wrote “When your lover has gone” (”Who was Einar Swan? A study in Jazz Age fame and oblivion”, available on the Internet), and two years later I was featured in a Finnish one-hour TV documentary based on that biography.

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My Jazz Story

I remember feeling very sad when the television news told of Louis Armstrong's passing in the summer of '71. I was eight years old; Louis was already my idol. It was a great experience when, some eighteen years later, I got the opportunity to play several concerts together with saxophonist Benny Waters who had so many stories to tell from his early life in bands together with Armstrong and other jazz greats of the twenties.