For more than five decades, award-winning Swedish composer and musician Ale Möller has shaped the leading edge of Nordic folk and world music. As a multi-instrumentalist fluent on keyboards, strings, and woodwinds alike, he has contributed to over fifty albums and written twelve hundred pieces since his emergence in the late 1970s.
Born in Malmö, Möller first embraced jazz and rock during his youth, drawing particular inspiration from post-bop trumpeter Clifford Brown. An encounter with local Greek bouzouki player Christos Mitrencis ignited a lasting interest in Greek musical traditions; Möller soon acquired and mastered the instrument himself. On one extended visit to Greece he performed with Neo Minore’s Orchestra, which frequently backed Mikos Theodorakis. Once back in Sweden he turned his attention to domestic folk roots, deepening that knowledge after relocating in the late 1970s to Dalarna, a region famed for its traditional fiddlers. Unable to replicate fiddle tunings on bouzouki, he adopted the mandola—an octave mandolin—and also took up harp, birch-bark horns, hammered dulcimer, and the eight-holed wooden whistle known as spelpipa.
Möller has sustained a prolific career both as soloist and collaborator, joining such varied groups as Frifot, the Stockholm Folk Big Band, Enteli, Filarfolket, and Ale Möller’s Lyckliga Enmansorkester. Among his notable recordings are the ECM albums Nordan (1994) and Agram (1996), made with violinist and vocalist Lena Willemark, and the 1999 solo release The Horse and the Crane, written for a stage work depicting the growth of Sweden’s railway network. His honors include multiple Grammy awards, the Swedish government’s Export Honor Award, and the 2014 Sir George Martin Music Award. In 2021 he marked fifty years as a performing artist with Xeno Mania, a wide-ranging orchestral suite featuring Senegalese violinist Gibril Bah, Boda fiddler Röjås Jonas, Indian performer Tarak Das Baul, and Greek singer Barba Thodoros.
