The Great Learning Orchestra isn’t an orchestra or ensemble in the narrow sense of the word. It’s really an address list of about 100 musicians from all walks of musical life (jazz, classical ensembles, symphony orchestras, the improvisational scene, the rock circuit, country, folk, and not least the Fylkingen gang), mostly in Stockholm. Before each project we browse the address list and invite the people who may be interested in playing music that demands sensitive ears more than the ability to read music, and who can accept that the only payment is the benefit of being a part of the event. The name of the orchestra, borrowed from a work by late British composer Cornelius Cardew, is to be interpreted as a big group (great) of learning players (orchestra). Cardew’s work The Great Learning is a large-scale work in 7 parts, that is performed on 7 consecutive nights. GLO has also adopted many of Cardew’s ideas on how professional musicians and amateurs can perform together in a great listening. We may use graphic scores or text instructions, but of course also regular notation.
The Great Learning Orchestra is a network of contacts that is constantly crossbreeding and fertilizing, leading to new constellations and collaborations with people you’d never meet otherwise.

The Great Learning Orchestra was founded in the spring of 1999 by Leif Jordansson and Pelle Halvarsson. For an extended period they had discussed – with colleagues and artists in other fields - the lack of and need for a forum for listening, studying and the joint performance of works situated in the borderland between art music and popular music. These discussions soon also revealed the need to involve central, “classical” pieces from modern musical history, placing them in a viable contemporary context.

The founders therefore invited about 40 active musicians to take part in a performance of Terry Riley’s In C, written 1964, later to be considered as a minimalist corner stone. This concert took place at Nalen, Club SEKT, in May 1999.

In November 1999 a joint event was conducted at Nalen, Stockholm, when 26 members took turns during 24 hours, playing Erik Satie’s Vexations; a short piece which is supposed to be played 840 times.
It had, up to this event, only been performed by pianists. This G.L.O. performance was the orchestral premier of the work.
During the preparatory process GLO established a good contact with Fondation Erik Satie in Paris and its leader Ornella Volta. The documentation of the concert will appear in a book dedicated to different performances of the work.

Through these GLO concerts The Great Learning Orchestra has established its extroverted aim of diffusing different music. The concerts have attracted the attention of newspapers, radio and television.

GLO is looking to get involved in the musical works of widely disparate references during its first operative period, including improvisation, digital manipulation and editing, choir works etcetera.

During the spring of 2000 a core of GLO played the guitar piece Go Guitars. It was the Swedish premier of a composition by the American composer Lois V. Vierk.

On the 24th of August 2000 a concert was arranged in Kungsträdgården, a central park in Stockholm, when GLO performed Erik Satie’s Musique d’ameublement. 20 musicians executed the concert in an unusually cold summer evening. The set-up included traditional instruments, samplings of the commotion in the park, a tabla machine, dub and laser. On account of the weather the audience wasn’t large, but enthusiastic! Many came and went during the six hours of the concert.

On the 17th of December 2000 The Great Learning Orchestra performed Gavin Bryars’ Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet under the direction of the composer in Högalidskyrkan (a church) in Stockholm, for the benefit of the homeless of the city. The performance was the finale of a 3-day workshop with Bryars, when 46 musicians had the opportunity to meet the composer and work with him in rehearsals and improvisations. This was made possible by grants from the Swedish Church, SAMI (Swedish Artists’ and Musicians Interest group), Konstnärsnämnden (The Board of Artists) and SKAP (The Society for Swedish Composers of Popular Music).
620 attendants came, and the event was well received by the press.

The collaboration with Gavin Bryars established a contact that makes it possible for us to invite more contemporary composers working in similar traditions. Gavin Bryars was himself a member of Cornelius Cardew’s ensemble The Scratch Orchestra in the 1970s, exploring music much in the same way that The Great Learning Orchestra does now.

On the 25th of May 2002 The Great Learning Orchestra performed Terry Riley’s Tread On the Trail under the direction of the composer at LAVA, the Culture House, Stockholm. We had played Terry Riley’s In C before, but now Riley had suggested that it would be more fun this time if we played Tread On the Trail, because it had only been done three times prior, so it was Terry’s idea for us to play this piece. He had reworked it some, and changed some parts, and he thought it would be fun to play it. We also believed it would suite our orchestra, because of the rock and jazz origin of some members and the way Tread On the Trail is written. It’s sort of like In C, but not in the sense of bars. This piece is more like jazz melodies that you repeat over and over, and you divide the orchestra into a number of small sections, just like you do in In C.

On the 25th of May 2003 - exactly one year after performing Terry Riley's Tread On the Trail - The Great Learning Orchestra played Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic in the large hall at Nalen, Stockholm, under the direction of Bryars. The orchestra was divided into 6 sections placed around the room, with the audience standing in the middle, and the work also calls for loudspeaker diffusion of pre-recorded parts, like survivors from the Titanic talking about their experiences, some concrete sounds etcetera.
This particular concert was a collaboration with The Stockholm University Orchestra. The leader of that orchestra has been a member of The Great Learning Orchestra, and we needed a lot of strings for The Sinking of the Titanic, which we didn’t have in that amount ourselves.

An example of what we are planning is an invitation to American composer and musician Pauline Oliveros, who is also a teacher of musical meditation. She has shaped a method that she calls Deep Listening.
We’re also planning a rendezvous with Glenn Branca, who wrote a number of symphonies for electric guitars in the 1980s. He may be considered an antithesis of Pauline Oliveros, since he explores the sounds that emerge on the verge of noise, achieved with a number of electric guitars tuned in various ways.

A non-profit association is under way. You become a member after having participated in some of the events conducted by the organization. GLO will not be an arranger organization, but will seek collaborations with SAMI, Rikskonserter and others for concerts, rehearsal spaces, larger dispatches etcetera.

The address list of the GGLO currently shows the names of about 100 musicians, who in various ways have participated in earlier arrangements. These will receive invitations to future events. Since one of the basic ideas of the GLO is openness, we believe that the number of interested people will increase.

The planned meets can be workshops, more or less open rehearsals, seminars and so forth. The meets will take place during weekends or evenings. They will require careful preparations and some research. We will call in guest lecturers when needed.

The address list contains musicians from all over Sweden, with the emphasis on the Stockholm area. We will establish contacts with similar constellations domestically as well as internationally.