Erik Arvinder: String Arranger To The Stars

The Stockholm Studio Orchestra have added their magic to countless hits. We tracked down the orchestra’s linchpin, Erik Arvinder.

Founder and Creative Director of Stockholm Studio Orchestra, Erik Arvinder.As founder and Creative Director of Stockholm Studio Orchestra, Erik Arvinder has become the first‑call string arranger for pop’s biggest names, including Childish Gambino, Lady Gaga and Avicii. His work also includes a vast catalogue of top‑tier films, TV shows and game scores.

Erik Arvinder grew up in a deeply musical household. His mother and father were both career violists; respectively performing with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra for over 40 years, and doing studio gigs with ABBA in addition to his full‑time position with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Erik picked up his first 16th‑size violin at age five, which in his family was almost considered too late. “I remember my father yelling things like ‘Too flat!’ from the top floor of our house when I was practising as a kid. Music was an essential part of my upbringing which made a lot of things feel natural when it came to learning and developing into a musician as I moved on.”

Erik’s musical development followed a pretty standard template for a young Swede. However, after completing his education at the Royal College of Music, he distinguished himself by winning an audition with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, becoming the youngest permanent member of the first violin section — where he shared the stage with his mother for four years. Many musicians would have regarded such a prestigious role as the pinnacle of their careers, but Erik felt the need to create as well as to perform, and decided to set off on his own path. Today he is arranger, conductor, producer, orchestrator and founder of Sweden’s busiest string orchestra, the Stockholm Studio Orchestra. “It wasn’t so much about missing something, as much as a different kind of hunger. There’s so much more to arranging music and running an orchestra. As my conducting responsibilities have expanded, I’ve found myself playing less and leading more. Conducting fascinates me, it challenges me in ways that playing never could.”

Continuity

In a sense, Erik was following in the footsteps of his father, who had appeared as a session player with Swedish icon Evert Taube, Björn Skifs, Bengt Palmers and ABBA, and moved in the same circles as the father of Erik’s future collaborator, Mattias Bylund. This was the generation that established the studio sound of Swedish pop. Decades later, the Stockholm Session Strings became the go‑to players for nearly everything leaving Swedish studios in the late ’90s and early 2000s, and the iconic backwards Bollywood sample on Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ is rumoured to have been played by Erik’s dad, amongst others.

Erik Arvinder: “In pop projects, I’m an arranger, shaping the song, its harmony, and how the strings interact with it. In film or orchestral work, I’m an orchestrator. I translate someone else’s composition into a playable, emotionally convincing score.

Today, Erik has taken up that baton, and as Creative Director of the Stockholm Studio Orchestra, he in turn is shaping the sound of contemporary pop. “In pop projects, I’m an arranger, shaping the song, its harmony, and how the strings interact with it. In film or orchestral work, I’m an orchestrator. I translate someone else’s composition into a playable, emotionally convincing score. One builds the form, the other brings it to life. As a conductor I make sure that the orchestral performance is at its very best, like a producer in real time.

“For a long time, the Swedish sound was ‘forest’. Clean. Now, the orchestra is moving toward a more American expression: bigger, bolder, more attitude and away from that slightly slim Nordic aesthetic. Less Nordic design and a bit more extra. At the same time, adaptability remains essential. One hour we are doing tight EDM rhythms, the next Nordic pop with restrained vibrato, then a ’60s pastiche full of glissandi and slow rubato phrasing.”

The Human...