Ellen Arkbro

Ellen Arkbro (born 1990) is a Swedish avant-garde composer working largely in meantone temperament. Her primary instrument is the pipe organ, and she also composes for brass and winds. Early work makes ample use of the text-based programming environment SuperCollider as a tonality design resource in which "there are some very natural ways of working with rational frequency relationships."
Early life.
Arkbro was born in Stockholm. Excelling in church choir she resolved to study jazz, only to find that jazz depressingly compelled her to seek an opposite aesthetic direction. After attending in Stockholm, and upon completing a degree in electroacoustic composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Arkbro studied just intonation under the tutelage of LaMonte Young, Marian Zazeela and Jung Hee Choi in New York and Marc Sabat in Berlin.
Recordings.
"For Organ and Brass".
For her 2017 debut album "For Organ and Brass", Arkbro, who was raised Baptist, uses the organ at St. Stephen's Church in Tangermünde, Germany, an instrument dating to 1624, in a church dating to 1118. The LP comprises recordings of her compositions in just intonation for renaissance organ, horn, trombone and microtonal tuba.
"CHORDS".
"CHORDS" (2019) was designed to draw attention to the way sound exists in space, the way tonality and harmony affect an environment. The music is intended for large speakers, allowing it to take over a home and envelop the listener.
"Pitchfork" finds that the album "delves even deeper into microtonal interplay, balancing heady theoretical terrain with a rare emotional resonance. [Arkbro's] music is infused with a profound emotionality that transcends its heady origins. Passing through the gates of extreme rigor, "CHORDS" finds private infinity in a handful or stretched-out drones."