Paragraph one: the beginning of the journey, where the young Swedish flute player for some strange reason finds himself born in the town Yekepa, in Liberia (that's on the west coast of Africa, for those of you who were about to reach for your atlas). If you are a Yekepa child, or adult who worked there, you should also look at The Yekepa Home on the Web.

People often ask what it was like to live there, meaning it must have been really unusual, or something. Usually I reply, with a smile, "it was normal". I mean, wherever you grow up, that's what you are used to. Or something like that. What it meant for me was that the bush was close by (it's rainforest country, after all), and my friends and I could run around close to it, looking for nifty insects like the green 4" grasshoppers whose bright orange wings were dotted with little black dots, or snakes - which were never as numerous as I wanted them to be. Don't forget to bring a diving mask in case you run in to spitting cobras. I'm not kidding... we must have looked great! :)

Here are some of the more memorable snakes that were around, with comments by myself:

Night Adder (I actually managed to catch/get a few of these)
Spitting Cobra (Boo! The closest I got to one of these was a dead one in alcohol)
Forest Cobra (There was a beautiful one in the Zoo, halfway to Monrovia)
Gaboon Viper (Totally camouflaged, with close to 2" fangs)

I don't know why I'm writing so much about snakes, as I haven't kept any in years. Now it's music, SRF yoga, computers and plants that occupy most of my time. I am also quite interested in birds, especially birds of prey, which are fairly abundant in California. Here is my Merlin story.

So I spent most of my first 10 years in Liberia, moved with the family to Sweden in late '76 and to California in early '79, where I went to Junior High, High School, San Francisco State University and finally San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Graduating from the Conservatory with a Bachelor Degree in flute performance, I decided to go to the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, in Holland, to learn more about Baroque flute and Early Music. After Holland and a musically frustrating year in Sweden, I moved back to the U.S. in fall '92 and settled in Santa Cruz, CA, which is about as settled as I ever have been. When I was little, I always thought I would end up doing biology or zoology or something like that, but I ended up stumbling over this music thing and that was that.

A couple of years after moving to Santa Cruz, however, I unsuspectingly began a second career as a computer admin. See my computer page for the latest details. :) No worries, I'm still a busy flutist with plenty of evening gigs, though I'm doing less teaching and fewer weddings these days. The year 2000 finds me with a wife and family; the computer side of my interests has ended up being a very useful thing.

And now for the Music

Mostly, my reason for moving to Santa Cruz, California in 1992 was to work with my friends involved with Gourd Music, a nutty, crunchy folky type of record label that's doing really well. I play on quite a few of their albums by now.

Since then I've beome involved in a number of other ensembles and organizations, including the ensemble Lux Musica which I helped to form in 1994 with a few other California Early Music types.

From 1995 - 97 I worked as manager for the Santa Cruz Baroque Festival, a local Early Music concert series, producing concerts during the spring months.





If you are looking for musicians for a wedding or other special occasion, I organize ensembles for hire, drawing on the best of the local professional musicians. (San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas only.)

I also teach privately: flute, Baroque flute, Irish style flute and pennywhistle. If you live in the Santa Cruz area and are interested, please email me for information.

Here are some links to flute & flute player pages that may be of interest. Feel free to e-mail me suggestions. Also, please visit my Baroque Flute Corner for information on this instrument. This page includes Baroque Flute fingering charts, Baroque Flute care, and a Q & A section. I have an Irish flute page, that needs a bit of work still. I've also written a few tunes, mostly in the Irish style. Two of them are now recorded on the Gourd label.

Tunes I've written.

inspirational poetry and songs. (not by me)
Miscellaneous links I find interesting.

My father's homepage with nice underwater pictures,
and some writings on the Guinea-Nimba exploration.

---

Design and HTML by Lars Johannesson
Send me some e-mail at: