Orphei Drängar (OD) consists of almost eighty singers aged between 20 and 55. Since its formation in Uppsala in 1853, the choir has striven to discover and develop new directions for the male-voice choir as a means of musical expression. For four decades each, some of Sweden’s finest conductors – Hugo Alfvén, Eric Ericson and Robert Sund – worked with OD. Since 2008 Cecilia Rydinger Alin has been the choir’s artistic director.
The annual ‘Caprice’ concerts, dating back to 1962, stand out in particular among the results of the choir’s ambition to expand the horizons that define what a choir can look and sound like. OD regularly seeks out musical encounters: it has a rich tradition of collaboration with eminent conductors including Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Alan Gilbert, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Neeme Järvi, with instrumentalists and singers such as the Kroumata Percussion Ensemble, Anne Sofie von Otter, Christian Lindberg, Malena Ernman and Peter Mattei, as well as with numerous symphony orchestras.
Every year OD undertakes concert tours in Sweden. In recent decades, the choir has also embarked on international tours to North and Central America and the Far East as well as to most European countries. OD has recorded some twenty records that together have sold almost 150,000 copies, and makes around twenty appearances annually in Sweden and abroad. His Majesty King Carl Gustaf XVI is Orphei Drängar’s permanent patron.
