The Chamber Choir Octava

With the desire for music and the wish to affect, the ambitious chamber choir Octava from Östersund, Sweden, takes on both new and earlier choral music. They offer a wide range of composers and after nearly 40 years they have a large and faithful audience.

For information about our events, please refer to our Swedish website.

About the Choir

Octava is an ambitious chamber choir with a strong desire for different kinds of music and is all the time striving to develop and refine its expression. The members all have a great experience of choirs and a common ambition to let the music be the centre. The repertoire is relatively broad but is mainly focused on traditional, modern and sacred music. In the last few years contemporary music has come to be an increasingly more prominent part of Octava's repertoire and the choir is striving to sing works which have not before been performed in its home town of Östersund - modern music by women as well as men composers - and this has resulted in a number of first performances.

In all its programmes Octava wants to create conserts that both affect and inspire, and some of the composers whose works the choir often sings are Arvo Pärt (Estonia), Ola Gjeilo (Norway), Stephanie Martin (Canada), Morten Lauridsen (USA), Cecilia McDowall (England) and Jämtland's own composer Wilhelm Peterson-Berger.

Beside countless performances in Jämtland and Härjedalen the choir has given concerts in the rest of Sweden and made tours in Norway, Germany, Lithuania and Iceland.

Octava is an ambitious chamber choir with a strong desire for different kinds of music and is all the time striving to develop and refine its expression. The repertoire is relatively broad but is mainly focused on traditional choir music, modern choir lyrics and sacred music. The classic genre has always been the foundation, but in recent years newly written music has become more prominent and one of Octava's goals is to present contemporary music by both female and male composers. The choir strives to sing works not previously published in the hometown of Östersund in programs that both touch and inspire. The choir has also made several performances.   Some of the composers whose work the choir often sings are Arvo Pärt (Estonia), Ola Gjeilo (Norway), Stephanie Martin (Canada), Rihards Dubra (Latvia), Cecilia McDowall (England) and Morten Lauridsen (USA).

More about the history of the Choir

Choir Singers

The chamber choir Octava in Östersund currently consists of just over 30 choristers. The members all have extensive choir experience and a common ambition to develop both as a group and as soloists, and see in Octava the opportunity to take on greater challenges.

The choir's permanent members are currently:

Soprano

Helen Asklund, Britt-Marie Öhrman-Bergqvist, Maria Blomberg, Astrid Domino, Nathalie Engman, Kicki Gustafsson, Gölin Hällberg, Kiki Korths-Aspegren, Isabelle Kron, Sigrid Lindqvist och Scilla Von Boisman

Alto

Lisbet Gibson, Elin Granbom, Lina Lannemyr Lindahl, Klara Lundström, Sofia Långström, Kristina Nordqvist, Elisabeth Ståhl, Marie Söderström och Ylva Åström

Tenor

Magnus Gibson, Max Lindqvist, Rasmus Lövgren, Per-Olov Olsson, Lars-Åke Wikström och Christian Öhrman

Bass

Olov Amelin, Gustaf Biasoletto, Johan Iwald, Johan Johansson, Mattias Refsnes, Magnus Skårstedt och Erik Wetterbrandt

Conductor

Maria Sjöstedt Björs is the director of the choir since 2016.

She was born in Umeå but grew up in Brunflo where she has her roots - in the village of Bodal.

She studied at the academies of music in Göteborg, Stockholm and Vercelli (Italy) and studied piano for among others Ingemar Bergefeldt, Vittorio Rosetta and Tamara Jeltowa - and conductorship for Gösta Ohlin, Jan Yngve and Per Borin. After her studies Maria returned to Jämtland as a piano teacher at the Arts Programme at Jämtlands Gymnasium.

Maria is active as a teacher, pianist, chamber musician and choir conductor in many different constellations in the county, among other things in projects such as Trio Quinta and Sounds of Women. For her work to bring out music by women composers she was awarded the cultural scholarship of the municipality of Östersund together with Trio Quinta and Lena Moén in 2017.

I am interested in what music might mean to people today and in what happens in the meeting between choir, composer, conductor and - perhaps the most important aspect - the audience. To work with music together with others always makes me happy ...