Born in Stockholm in 1966, a composer and trombonist, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm and at ircam in Paris. In 1989 he made his debut as a soloist with the Swedish Radio Orchestra. His career as a composer started in the same year with performance of his octet by the Ensemble L'Itinéraire at Radio France. Since then, his music has been performed at such prestigious events as the Huddersfield Festival, 'Sonorities' (Belfast), Le Biennale du Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (Montreal), 'Time of Music' (Viitasaari, Finland), 'Inventionen' (Berlin), Gaudeamus Music Week (Amsterdam), 'Spaziomusica' (Cagliari), 'Two Days and Two Nights' (Odessa) and 'Beyond 440 Hz' (Los Angeles).
Besides his activities as a soloist, he is a member of the KammarensembleN and 'Son' Ensemble as well as the Axelsson & Nilsson duo.
Both his own works and his performances of other composers can be found on the label Phono Suecia.
Selected works: Ioco for cimbalom and piano (1994), Nerve for solo viola (1988), Puls for solo piano (Ariadne's flutes) (1988), Agnosi for chamber ensemble (1988), Per-cept for septet (1989-91), Eidetics for chamber ensemble and live electronics (1991), Totentanz for chamber ensemble (1993), ixoidi for wind symphony orchestra (1995), żLo mismo for two pianos (1996), Deaf-mute for percussion, trombone and live electronics (1997), Tre equale for guitar, trombone and vibraphone (1998), Pedal for flute, organ and percussion (1999), Luta for solo theorbo (1999-2000), rotor for solo clarinet (1999), rotor 2 for percussion and trombone (1999), root for solo percussion (1999), rotorelief for chamber ensemble and voice (2001), rotorelief, suite for chamber ensemble (2001), Skev for recorder and theorbo (2001-02), Sotto vuoto for saxophone and trombone (2002).

rotorelief is the title of 12 visual spirals on six discs that Marcel Duchamp printed in 1935. The idea was that they could be 'played' on a gramophone in order to achieve three-dimensional mobiles. As in the double meaning of the word 'relief', this effect is supposed to be both visual and transcendental.
When I saw the spirals in action for the first time, my immediate reaction was: What would they sound like? So I decided to follow my own imagination in writing a piece for each of them. The titles of the reliefs, as well as the movements in my suite, are:
verre de bohême
montgolfiére
spirale blanche
lampe
lanterne chinoise
poisson japonaise
cerceaux
cage
oeufà la coque
éclipse totale
escargot
corolles

The rotorelief suite was extracted from a whole evening project commissioned by Rikskonserter, which was premiered at Kulturhuset in Stockholm in 2001.
Ivo Nilsson