Like Ronnie Scott in England, Martial Solal in France and Friedrich Gulder in Austria, the Swedish saxophonist Arne "Dompan" Domnérus, who has died aged 83, was one of a first wave of European musicians authoritatively exploring the sophisticated idiom of bebop, and his assured performances at the Paris jazz festival of 1949 did much to put Swedish jazz on the map.
But the folk music of his homeland also influenced Domnérus, and churches became his favourite playing locations from the 1970s on. In this respect, this delicate, subtle and immensely musical performer was ahead of his time in nourishing authentic European diversions from the dominant African-American traditions.
His airy, and faintly melancholy, alto sax sound reflected the urbane understatement and languid romanticism of the pre-bop swingers Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges as much as it did the urgency of Charlie Parker. As a clarinettist, he also admired the Ellingtonian Barney Bigard, and the nimble phrasing and liquid sound of Buddy DeFranco.
Domnérus was born near Stockholm, studied clarinet as a child, and entered his school's marching band out of an enthusiasm for the uniform. In the 1940s, he began to make his mark with the popular dance bands of Lulle Ellboj and Simon Brehm. His work as a soloist at the 1949 Paris jazz fair, also attended by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, led to his first recordings - and an overnight reputation. It became a debating point in jazz circles as to who was the best alto saxophonist in Europe - Domnérus, or Britain's new discovery, Johnny Dankworth.
Domnérus also worked in this period with the brilliant but underrated pianist Gosta Theselius, on early recordings that reveal how imaginatively he was beginning to elide the influences of bebop and swing.
Through the 1950s, Domnérus was resident at the Nalen jazz club in Stockholm, where he led a popular orchestra that also regularly toured, and appeared in the short film Arne Domnérus Spelar ("Arne Domnérus Plays"). His Nalen ensemble nurtured other creative Swedish jazz musicians, notably the baritone saxophonist and composer/arranger Lars Gullin. It was probably Gullin who was the inspiration for the shrewd and drily funny cult 1976 Swedish jazz movie Sven Klang's Kvintett, about an old bop player whose wilful independence disrupts the ingrained routines of a touring jazz band. But the central character's observation that by the 1970s Swedish jazz had ended up being heard in churches more often than clubs is widely taken to be a reference to Domnérus's expansion of the gig circuit in that more liturgical direction.
Prior to that era, however, he had shown himself capable of thriving with some of the best jazz musicians in the world. He regularly worked with the fine Swedish pianist and organist Bengt Hallberg, who had accompanied Stan Getz and Lee Konitz in the early 1950s, and who participated with Domnérus and other gifted locals in landmark Swedish performances with the American trumpeters Clifford Brown and Quincy Jones (Jones conducted the Swedish All-stars band) in 1953.
With his immaculate technique, musical imagination and versatility, Domnérus was also tailor-made for the radio station big bands that flourished across postwar Europe. From 1956 to 1965, he was a member (alongside Hallberg) of Harry Arnold's Swedish Radio Big Band, and from 1966 to 1978 the leader of the Radiojazzgruppen orchestra that succeeded it. During this period, he evolved as a musician for all kinds of occasion and circumstance, but always one who would bring a unique signature to any project - which from the 1970s onwards included ballet and theatre music, and cross-idiom solo roles with choirs, symphony orchestras and big bands.
After he quit leadership of the radio band, Domnérus spent the next two decades enthusiastically refining his solo skills and discovering up-and-coming players whenever he could. In the mid-1970s, inspired by Duke Ellington's sacred concerts, he took to performing jazz, classical and ecclesiastical music in churches - and his sound became quieter and more thoughtful, eschewing dynamic extremes.
By the 1990s, he was often playing a stately kind of chamber-jazz, in venues such as the Swedish Academy of Music. But his popular live recording of swing and "trad" tunes from the Pawnshop club in Stockholm showed an enduring enthusiasm for the old geniality, and his fine 1999 recording Face to Face with his fellow saxophonist Bernt Rosengren was a genuinely innovative re-examination of swing, bop and the cool school sax dialogues of Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.
Domnérus also played a lively and lyrical season at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles in 2000, recorded on the Dompan! album - many regarded his playing as improving in subtlety and depth with age. However, ill health had silenced his distinctive muse in recent years.
He is survived by his wife, Britta, and his sons, Leif and Tony.