Biography
During his teenage years in Stockholm Werner studied harmony and took up the tenor saxophone. Jazz figures such as Charlie Parker, Lennie Tristano and Tadd Dameron stood alongside European classical composers Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg among his earliest inspirations. He abandoned the tenor for piano in the early 1950s. By 1956 he was leading his own quintet on tours across Europe. That same year a West German club appearance with Lester Young was recorded for broadcast and later issued as the album Pres in Europe; the encounter decisively shaped Werner’s commitment to a jazz career. In the late 1950s he recorded alongside tenor saxophonist Bernt Rosengren. A lasting partnership with bassist Kurt Lindgren developed through the 1960s. Both musicians belonged to the circle that played regularly at Stockholm’s Golden Circle club and collaborated on a production of Jack Gelber’s play The Connection. Together Werner and Lindgren assembled a band featuring saxophonist Christer Boustedt. Drawing on the ideas of experimental composer John Cage and the performance-art practices of the 1960s, the ensemble introduced absurdist theatrical components into its shows. In the late 1960s Werner parted from Lindgren and launched Lasse Werner and His Friends, a project that continued through the 1970s in shifting line-ups that frequently retained Boustedt. A diabetes-induced coma in 1978 compelled him to step away from performance; although he achieved a partial return in the period immediately preceding his death in 1992, full recovery never occurred. Werner was also regarded as a knowledgeable author on jazz topics.
Albums
