I’ve been a fan of pianist Karin Johansson for several years now. I first heard her as part of a duo with saxophonist Lisen Rylander Löve; I reviewed their album on the main site. The video below was her contribution to the Burning Ambulance Festival, an online-only event I put together on New Year’s Day 2022.

More recently, I’ve heard her project Ord, which set poet Thomas Tranströmer’s writing to chamber jazz arrangements (piano, a couple of horns, bass) on the album Hemligheter på vägen, and now she’s working with composer Rosanna Gunnarson on the album I grunda vikar är bottnarna mjuka (translation: In shallow bays the seabed is soft).

The album is in large part made up of underwater field recordings made by Gunnarson at various times of year, and a recording of a piano being lowered into the water — the inspiration for the album was a story by August Strindberg in which this happens. Responding to this sonic material and a partly graphic score, Johansson then added prepared piano improvisations at a studio in Göteborg. The result is dark, wood-toned, haunted music; sudden eruptions of scraping wire and booming keys mix with the burble and churn of the water and soft, subtle drones of indeterminate origin. Although it offers startling jumps in volume over its roughly 45-minute running time, it’s a deeply immersive (no pun intended) record best experienced on headphones.

I sent Karin Johansson five questions by email; her responses are below.

What’s your background as a pianist? What kind of training did you do in school (or anywhere else), and when did you begin to move into prepared piano and other unconventional techniques?

I grew up in Malmö, Sweden, and started to play the piano as a child, mainly classical music. As a teenager I began listening to jazz and all kinds of music. I went to music high school and started to play in various bands. When I was in my twenties I traveled in Cameroon for five months with two musician friends. That journey made a deep impact on me; I learned a lot about life and music. We experienced so much amazing music; among other things, we visited the pygmies. After a while I moved to Gothenburg where I was educated at the Academy of Music and Drama. After my degree I worked a lot with composing and playing theatre music, in addition to playing in bands. I was also active as a trombonist for a few years, but that’s another story. The first time I prepared a piano was in 1994 when I made music for a theatre play by the Swedish writer and actor Staffan Westerberg. I am still fascinated by the possibilities to explore new sounds and to find my own approach to the piano. 

How do you personally strive to avoid clichés in your music — not just the clichés of genre (jazz, classical) but the clichés that govern improvisation as well?

Improvisation is very much about being present, finding your own language and walking into the unknown. It is a never-ending adventure which I constantly practice. Listening and having good communication when playing together is very important to me. Working with creative musicians inspires and challenges me to get new musical ideas. Musicians I have worked with for many years mean a lot to me, as well as new collaborations are important. Everyone has their own individual way of expressing themselves and communicating. 

What was the process (from concept to technical realization) behind I grunda vikar är bottnarna mjuka? Were you part of the field recordings or did you just record in response to what you received from Rosanna Gunnarson?

I grunda vikar är bottnarna mjuka (In shallow bays the seabed is soft) is inspired by August Strindberg’s classic short story about a fortepiano being dropped into deep waters off an archipelago island, Stora grusharpan. The musical content is based partly on Rosanna’s secret underwater recordings during a summer, autumn and winter, as well as her audio recordings of a piano being lowered into the water, to the great surprise of curious fish. The recorded material has then been mixed into an audio file and then, based on a partly graphic score, I have developed improvisations on prepared grand piano. I was not part of the field recordings but we worked a lot together with the score before I recorded, to find the right timing and sounds for my preparations. The score includes both graphic and traditional notation. 

(From the liner notes: The result is a deep dive into an archipelago bay. A collage of the sound environment in an increasingly threatened sea, in dialogue with resounding memories of a lost childhood by the Baltic Sea. It is about setting anchor, learning to swim, and finding yourself at the intersection of three different worlds — the one above the surface, the one below the surface, and your own inside.)

I’ve also heard your collaboration with Lisen Rylander Löve, and the album you made with ORD. What do you think your projects have in common? What is the key element that makes your music your own?

I use prepared piano in different ways depending on the context and who I’m working with; free improvisation, free jazz or sound art/contemporary. Sometimes I combine preparations and alternative techniques with conventional playing and composition in the same context. I like to work with a variety of pianos and similar instruments; grand piano and upright of course, but also square piano, accordion, pump organ, zither, Michelsonne-pianos and different types of kalimbas. 

All of the records I’ve heard of yours are very much records — they’re not just documents of improvisation, you really use the studio and recording technology as a conceptual tool. Why is that important to you?

My ideas for an album often come to me as a combination of music and something else, such as images, texts or an impression I’ve got of a specific place. With the ORD album Hemligheter på vägen (Secrets on the Way) I wanted to set Tomas Tranströmer’s poetry to music and include free improvisations. I also had the idea for the album cover; a photo of myself as a child. Lisen Rylander Löve’s and my album Arter (Species) takes its titles from the Red List of Threatened Species. Many species (plants and animals) disappear completely from our planet yearly, which we wanted to shine a light on. We spent one day in the recording studio and all music was improvised. Vent, the album with Finn Loxbo, is based on the idea of specific acoustic rooms. We recorded in several locations and I played various instruments depending on the situation, all improvised. The album with Rosanna Gunnarson is a bit different because she, as the composer, invited me to the project. I really like her work and she has great ideas. It was an adventure when we carried a grand piano to the beach of Värmdö in the Stockholm archipelago, the place where she made the field recordings, and we performed the piece there. 

Sometimes I record improvised music live in front of an audience, without having any specific ideas in advance. I find both of these approaches interesting and complementary. To mention two live albums: Quagmire with Nina de Heney, myself and Henrik Wartel and Live at Elementstudion [with the] Jonny Wartel Quartet. The next upcoming album is with the trio of Paul Jarret, myself and Donovan von Martens, a Swedish/French collaboration.