WE CAN BE HEROES

About the Performance

For almost 20 years, TV personality, author, and concert producer Orvar Säfström and soprano Sabina Zweiacker have created acclaimed concerts with music from famous films and games. Now they are finally coming to Uppsala, accompanied by the Gävle Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Alexander Hanson, with the concert WE CAN BE HEROES – filled with bombastic, poignant, and unforgettable music!

The duo Säfström and Zweiacker have previously produced and performed audience successes such as SCORE and SAGAS at several of Sweden’s largest concert halls. In WE CAN BE HEROES, they take us into the world of film heroes, with music from some of the most iconic and beloved blockbusters of all time.

Heroes come in many different guises, and here we meet, among others, Frodo in The Lord of The Rings, the superheroes in The Avengers, Batman, and the multifaceted Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. Sarah Connor fights against The Terminator, and the traumatized veteran John Rambo faces sadistic local police in First Blood. We stand side by side with Katniss in The Hunger Games, fight scary space creatures together with Ripley in Aliens, and listen to extraterrestrial opera singing in Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element.

Last but not least, we step out onto the Colosseum’s arena to Hans Zimmer’s iconic music from Gladiator. To all this, we also add John Williams’ beloved compositions from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars. Heroic is an understatement!

Sabina Zweiacker, Soprano Soloist

Sabina Zweiacker graduated in classical singing from the Malmö Academy of Music in 2012 and, since her debut with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra in 2013, has been a soloist with Scandinavia’s leading orchestras, such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, and nine times with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Berwaldhallen.

Orvar Säfström, Program Host

Orvar Säfström is still remembered by many as the host of Filmkrönikan on Swedish Television, but he is truly a jack-of-all-trades who has been awarded both the Swedish Video Industry’s honorary award and named “Player of the Year” by the youth association SVEROK. He has written several award-winning books on pop culture, runs the publishing house Fandrake, and has been Scandinavia’s leading producer of concerts with film and game music for 20 years.

Gävle Symphony Orchestra

The Gävle Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1912 and has a long and exciting history with a strong focus on the future. Since its inception, the Gävle Symphony Orchestra has played a significant role on the Swedish music scene, and its 52 musicians are driven by an undeniable and heartfelt passion for music. They tackle a repertoire that ranges from baroque to the latest contemporary music with equal curiosity and commitment.

The orchestra has regularly collaborated with internationally renowned artists such as Anne Sofie von Otter, Janine Jansen, Viktoria Mullova, Nemanja Radulovic, Gabriela Montero, and Christian Zacharias.

Alexander Hanson, Conductor

Alexander Hanson is a prominent Swedish conductor with training from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where he graduated in 2004 with top marks under Leif Segerstam. He is a recurring guest conductor with leading Nordic orchestras and has collaborated internationally with, among others, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra.

In Sweden, he has conducted and recorded albums with orchestras such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, and the Gothenburg Wind Orchestra. Hanson has also guested orchestras in, among others, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. For many years, he has also been active at the Gothenburg Opera with productions such as Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla and Romeo and Juliet.

Since 2018, he has been Music Director of the Swedish Royal Navy Band in Karlskrona.

Image used by kind permission of Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Sweden

Information