Börje Fredriksson

Borge Fredriksson worked as a tenor saxophonist in Sweden throughout the 1950s and 1960s yet stayed largely underexposed. His intricate, abstract post-bop language brought scant commercial reward during his lifetime, although Scandinavian jazz musicians kept rediscovering his pieces for decades after he died. He released only one album under his own name, the 1966 date Intervall, and took his own life in the fall of 1968 at age 31. Following his death, the sheet music for his compositions passed to pianist Bobo Stenson, who had played with Fredriksson since 1963 and formed the rhythm section of his final group alongside bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Fredrik Noren. In 1994 that same rhythm section joined forces with tenor saxophonist Joakim Milder (born 1965 in Sweden) to record the album Sister Maj’s Blouse for Mirrors, devoted entirely to Fredriksson’s music. Milder then reunited with Stenson, Danielsson, and Noren in 1997 and 1998 for the follow-up Mirrors release Epilogue, again built around Fredriksson compositions.