Career
Staern's music has been performed at festivals for new music, such as Ung Nordisk Musik, Stockholm New Music and Sirenfestivalen in Gothenburg. In August 2006, his work The Threat of War was performed twice by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in Stockholm Concert Hall, conducted by Michael Christie.
Staern also received grants from the Swedish Royal Musical Academy, Helge Ax: son Johnson, Annik och Lars Leander, Rosenborg/Gehrmans composition study scholarship and STIM.
New European Ensemble
From 2010 to 2014, Staern was composer-in-residence with the New European Ensemble in the Netherlands, at the invitation of its artistic director, Christian Karlsen. His works for the ensemble included Tranströmersånger, the chamber symphony Bells and Waves and the multimedia work SAIYAH. Bells and Waves received the Swedish Music Publishers' Association's chamber music award in 2011.
Operas and orchestral music
His clarinet concerto Worried Souls, written for Karin Dornbusch, received the Major Christ Johnson Prize in 2012.
Staern was the featured composer at the Båstad Chamber Music Festival in 2016, where his guitar concerto Air-Spiral-Light was premiered with Jacob Kellermann as soloist. His opera Snödrottningen (The Snow Queen), with a libretto by Anelia Kadieva Jonsson after Hans Christian Andersen, premiered at Malmö Opera in December 2016. His chamber opera Hilma, about Hilma af Klint, was performed at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
The Stockholm Concert Hall's Composer Weekend in April 2022 featured Staern's music and the premiere of his Symphony No. 2, Through Purgatory to Paradise, performed by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.
