After an intensive recruitment process, Åsa has filled the vacancies in the music course’s teaching team with two exciting names. One is new, the other a returning face – and both have their hearts in jazz.

At the end of the last academic year, two long-serving colleagues retired from their teaching duties. The renowned jazz pianist Anders Persson had taught on the course for just over seven years, while freelance bassist Claes Fall for nearly six.

As the 2025/2026 academic year now gets underway, both positions have been filled. Persson’s successor as piano and ensemble teacher is, in fact, a true “returner”: Johannes Annfält.

A familiar face
Johannes is not only well known to those familiar with Katrineholm’s rich music scene. He also knows Åsa’s corridors and rehearsal rooms inside out, having both studied and previously worked at the school.

After completing the music arts programme at upper secondary school, Johannes studied on Åsa’s music course for two years, 2015–2017.

“I developed enormously as a pianist, in many genres but especially in jazz, which I was quite new to at the time. Even then, there was a great deal of creative freedom at Åsa – you could create a lot yourself, and I thrived in that environment.”

Alongside his teaching at Katrineholm’s School of Culture, Johannes worked as a supply teacher on Åsa’s music course.

“Then I spent a whole year here, leading music as an elective subject within the general course,” he says.

Another “folkis”
Johannes went on to study for another year at a “folkis” (folk high school), the music programme at Lunnevad, before enrolling on the Royal College of Music’s jazz musician programme in Stockholm, where he studied for three years.

Since then, he has kept busy as a freelancer in a wide range of musical genres and contexts. He has received awards and prestigious scholarships, most recently from the Margot & Tobi Foundation.

Although now based in Stockholm, Johannes still has strong ties to Katrineholm. He continues to teach some students at the School of Culture and, since 2020, has run the instrument shop Annfält’s Musik together with his mother Eva.

“It’s great fun and an honour to be back at Åsa. Ever since I finished as a student here, I’ve had the goal that, if I’m going to teach anywhere, it should be at Åsa,” he says.

Similar backgrounds
The second new recruit to the music course may be less familiar at Åsa, but certainly not in Sweden’s jazz scene. Stina Andersdotter is a musician, composer and vocalist based in Malmö. She has been appointed 30 per cent part-time as Åsa’s new bass and ensemble teacher.

Her path into professional music is strikingly similar to Johannes Annfält’s. She grew up in a family where music always played a major role. After trying several different instruments, she settled on the bass during her music upper secondary years.

After studies at the folk high schools Fridhem and Lunnevad, Stina went on to Malmö Academy of Music, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in jazz and improvisation in spring 2015.

Her position at Åsa begins at the start of the new year. For the autumn term, the school has appointed Charlie Wistbacka as bass teacher.

Like Johannes Annfält, he is well known in Katrineholm’s music life, holds a bachelor’s degree from Örebro Academy of Music, and has “folkis” experience from music studies at the folk high schools in Bollnäs and Kävesta.

Text: Henrik Wising