Biography

Stefan Schwalgin was born 1965 in Datteln/Germany. Starting at the age of ten he learned several wind instruments as an autodidact. Soon the writing of music became his preoccupation. Arrangements and compositions for different instrumentations (Orchestra, Big Band, Wind Band) were written.

After military music service as a saxophonist, clarinetist, keyboard player and arranger he graduated in musicology at the university of Hamburg in 1998 as a doctor in philosophy. Alongside he studied composition and electro-acoustic design with Theodor O. Franck. Between 1983 and 2004 Schwalgin was conductor of several non-professional and professional groups (e. g. B.T. Orchester, Bad Bramstedt; Police Band in Schwerin). With all these ensembles he performed mainly his own arrangements. Since 2006 Stefan Schwalgin has been living as freelance arranger, composer and author of books in Bad Bramstedt north of Hamburg.

It is not at all easy to define his musical ‘homeland’. From boyhood on he felt at home in both, entertaining and ‘serious’ music. That there are different “categories” or “genres” of music he realized late in life and almost against his own wishes. But because these circumstances, according to his own opinion, “won't change during the next two hundred years”, he tries to make the most of this situation: Predominantly he writes jazz- an pop-influenced arrangements with a broad spectrum of colors and harmonies unusual in this field.

Schwalgin's works for Wind Band have been published since 2004 by the international renowned publishing groups De Haske and Musikverlag RUNDEL. During this time his arrangements established themselves in the repertoire of many orchestras in and outside of Germany. Professional orchestras for whom he wrote commissioned works or who performed his arrangements are (to name only a few): Polizeiorchester Rheinland-Pfalz, Musikkorps der Bundeswehr, Heeresmusikkorps 3, Polizeiorchester Hamburg, Marinemusikkorps Ostsee, Swiss Army Concert Band, Polizeiorchester Niedersachsen.