Eric Ericson: Movies & Box Office

Eric Gustaf Ericson (26 October 1918 – 16 February 2013) was a Swedish choral conductor whose influence reshaped twentieth‑century choral practice worldwide. Born in Sweden, he entered the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and earned his diploma in 1943, after which he expanded his studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland and undertook further training in Germany, Great Britain and the United States, absorbing a breadth of historical and contemporary techniques. Upon returning to his homeland he founded the Swedish Radio Choir in 1951 on his own initiative and served as its choirmaster until 1982, while simultaneously assuming the principal conductorship of the historic Orphei Drängar choir at Uppsala University, a post he held for four decades until 1991. In the same year he began a distinguished teaching career at the Royal College of Music, where his reputation as a legendary pedagogue grew; he was appointed to the chair of choral conducting in 1968 and mentored generations of conductors who continue his legacy. Ericson’s repertoire was unusually expansive, ranging from Renaissance polyphony to avant‑garde works by composers such as Ingvar Lidholm, Sven‑David Sandström and Tomas Jennefelt, and he frequently invited contemporary composers to write for his ensembles. He established the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, which became a laboratory for experimental choral sound and toured internationally, collaborating with groups such as the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the French Accentus ensemble. His contributions were recognized with numerous honors, including the Litteris et Artibus (1968), the Léonie Sonning Music Prize (1991), the Nordic Council Music Prize (1995) and the Polar Music Prize (1997), which he shared with Bruce Springsteen. In 1983 he received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, and in 1998 the university created an Eric Ericson Chair in Choral Directing in his name. His work on Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 film The Magic Flute was praised for its balance of levity and solemnity, cementing his reputation as a Mozartian conductor to be reckoned with. Throughout a career that spanned more than seven decades, Ericson remained a driving force behind the revitalization of choral music in Sweden and beyond.