MA
(photo by Maja Borg)
Ma is the hungarian word for ”today”. During the 1910s and 1920s, it was the title of a
socially critical and radical cultural journal in Budapest.
Ma is also a swedish ensemble for twentieth and twenty- first century music. The group was formed in 1987, on the eve of a performance of Anton Webern´s opus 22, by violinist and conductor Staffan Larson, clarinettist Boa Pettersson, saxophonist Christer Johnson and pianist Love Derwinger. In 1994, MA, now in expanded form, attracted attention for their performance during the ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music) world music days in Stockholm.
Since then the group consists of, in addition to those already mentioned, violinist Eva Lindal,
cellist/composer Chrichan Larson, percussionist/composer Jonny Axelsson and trombonist/composer Ivo Nilsson.
Ma is a forum for musicians wishing to create programmes based upon an ideological community. The ensemble finds its repertoire among the classical modernists of the twentieth century and in the currents that make up our contemporary modernist tradition.