Björn Carlsson Music
Imagination and Movement
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See the Music, Hear the Image® - Relaunch 2026
A Music Project for and with Children and Symphony Orchestras
See the Music, Hear the Picture® is one of Björn’s most heartfelt projects, developed in close collaboration with professional symphony orchestras and schools.
How it works
In a first meeting, the orchestra and its musicians greet the children as co-musicians. They introduce the instruments — how they work, what they are capable of, and how they sound alone and together to create magical sonic worlds. This is done in the same space and on the same level. Everyone is as much on stage as anyone else.
The creative process continues with each child drawing an image. From their own picture, they then invent two or more short melodies that they feel belong to what they have drawn. These melodies are then arranged and orchestrated by Björn and the team, in collaboration with the children.
The final result is a live concert performance, where the orchestra plays the children’s music while the original drawings are projected on a large screen behind the orchestra.
Each child experiences their own ideas transformed into orchestral music, performed live by world-class musicians in front of a real audience.
The project, created by Björn, was originally conceived and launched at the beginning of the millennium, realized and performed in the county of Halland, Sweden, to great appreciation from the children, their parents, and their teachers — a proof of concept grounded in the children’s own experience, and affirmed by their parents and teachers.
The Adrian Slips Project
A Stage Art Initiative for Children and their Grown-Ups
Adrian Slips
Music for the childrens book
For a small Symphony Orchestra
Here
Seventh small movement from the Suite for the childrens tale Adrian Slips.
Here
About the Book and the Music
The story about Adrian and his friends is a story about taking it easy. Having a good time with friends and other acquaintances.
But there is supposed to be a little bit more to it – and hopefully this inspires its readers to play around with these (barely) hidden ideas between the first and the last page of the book. Throughout his adventure, Adrian gradually realizes that everyone he meets and everything he sees and experiences is a part of one consistent world. The broader idea of one common home for us all. His relentless attempts to find his way home gradually changes into getting to know the home he is already in – and a part of.
Thus, not only the story as a whole, but in a sense, every chapter in itself, is a reflected loop. The story repeats itself with a dash of new insight for every round – and Adrian adjusts his approach to being astray accordingly.
The music is composed to underscore the whole idea – not only the progression of the story. Although divided into eight small movements, one for each chapter, it is really just one movement. The main theme of the story, the motto appearing directly in the first movement, appears, more or less unchanged in every movement. But it also serves as a progenote for the individual mottos of each one of them. Together with the falling minor third accompaniment figure, it is the building block of the whole suite. Melodies, harmonies and rhythmical patterns.
The music is kept very simple. It tries to capture the English tale telling tradition that the story is inspired by and the pastoral settings of the book. The only moment in the whole piece where a modulation is made is in the seventh movement (Here), where, in the story, Adrian realizes that he actually already is home and makes his small paradigm shift in how he views the world. The reunion with everything he thought he lost, especially his best friend, is almost instant. The last movement is a bit of a recapturing party. Characters and themes come together, and new ideas emerge, again, based on the previous.
Why this approach? Well. The story is about transformation – not about departure. Experiencing our world as one. Growing, preferably together, through action and reflection. Taking it easy. Breathing. And maybe having a bit of fun on the way.
Björn Carlsson – Frillesås, November 2025
Featured
Journey Home
For a large Symphony Orchestra
Fifth movement of the Suite All we are. Underscoring the movie with the same name. directed by Carter Emmart of the Rose Science Center for Earth and Space at AMNH in New York
Journey Home
Selected Standalone Pieces
For Cello Solo
A Gnome Worn Out
For String Orchestra
Seconds before Spring
Revisions in progress
All We Are
Music for the movie All we are
Mass
Music for a scientific visualization
Some pieces are presented here as digitally rendered demos. While not live recordings, they reflect the musical ideas, structure, and detail written for full orchestral performance.