Isak Hedtjärn

Isak Hedtjärn is a Stockholm clarinetist who took up the instrument late, at eighteen, after earlier study of drums and jazz. Largely self-taught, he approaches it without the inherited habits of conservatory training, favouring a straight metal variant of the B-flat clarinet as a vehicle for free improvisation. He has toured internationally as a sideman with Fire! Orchestra, Viagra Boys and Maurice Louca's Elephantine project, and works within the free-jazz group Grismask and Svenska Folkjazzkvartetten. His first record under his own name, Kvarpan (2024), gathers diary-like improvisations in which he duets with himself, layering the clarinet's textures into a small ensemble of one.