Paula af Malmborg Ward is a composer and musician with a penchant for musical drama. She grew up in Stockholm, lives in Gothenburg since 1992 and composes music in a former coke quenching tower at Nya Varvet. She is educated at the Academies of Music in Malmö and Stockholm and has, among other things, been composer in residence with the Gothenburg Symphony and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. Timing and text are two key words in her creating opera and her works for orchestra and choir, solo and ensemble as well as music for TV and radio. In 2022, Paula released two double CDs on Imogena Records, with songs created in the years before her composing career: Pållan's songs - to the end, from the beginning (2023 March release) MORE Pållan's songs (2023 December release)
Her more important works are GöteborgsOperan's commissioned work Mytomania worldpremiere in October 2023 and her debut opera Bombpartyt 1998, also commissioned by GöteborgsOperan. In December 2023, her vocal symphony Spår vägar will premiere with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Furthermore the choral works Äggen är slut and Hjässan är kal 2017 - 2019 and Criança which was commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music for H.M. Queen Silvia's 70th birthday in 2013. She has also created the music for SVT's Christmas calendar En Decemberdröm in 2005 and the radio opera Hittekvinnan in 2005, for which she received the 1st prize Prix Italia. Other awards include the Rosenberg Prize of the Association of Swedish Composers, the City of Gothenburg's Badge of Merit, the Carin Malmlöf-Forssling Prize and Expressen's Music Prize Spelmannen. Paula is a board member of the Royal Academy of Music and a member of the Association of Swedish composers (FST) and Sweden's composers and lyricists (SKAP). Paula af Malmborg Ward is one of the initiators of Kalvfestivalen and Frontside Gothenburg International Chamber Music Festival.