Beneath the Restless Canopies

Ask Kjærgaard, Jens Albinus, Rasmus Kjær, LiveStrings: »Store træers grønne mørke«

An inner soundscape characterises being in love. You walk through the city with a new rhythm, a different melody. The same is true of depression, though here major gives way to minor. Yet the early phases of love, too, can contain moments of doubt and dark foreboding. In composer and guitarist Ask Kjærgaard’s musical staging of Naja Marie Aidt’s 2006 short story Store træers grønne mørke (The Green Darkness of Large Trees), released as an LP last year, this same interplay is palpable as the music moves us from gentle strokes through melancholy to a rougher sound. The recording features the trio LiveStrings – cello, violin and viola – with actor Jens Albinus as the first-person narrator.

In the concert version of Kjærgaard’s work in Aarhus, featuring Rasmus Kjær on keyboards, Albinus’s voice appeared even more exposed. The piece introduces us to a depressed man who, wandering through a park, finds moments of calm beneath the trees—and at times up in them. For when despair causes you to fall out of the system’s sky, through sickness benefits and social assistance, only to land at the roots of the trees, perhaps there is only one thing to do: climb into the treetops? But then our anti-hero meets a woman in the park, and the drama begins. Can infatuation lift him out of depression, or will it end up short-circuiting him?

At first, the music crept in quietly. Kjærgaard’s ability to support the flow of the text revealed his experience as a film composer, particularly in his blending of classical music, meditative new age, and piercing guitar. Words and music carried the narrative together. When Albinus fell silent, the music became the voice of the inner landscape. The strings, in particular, delivered the dreamlike tones of infatuation, but when the gloom returned with renewed force, it was Kjærgaard who, with a roaring guitar, sprawled across the emotional abyss. It was beautiful and brutal.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

playlist

25.02

My name is Louise Beck – would you like to see my playlist?

»I listen to music at all hours of the day when I’m at home – surrounded by family – or when I’m working and travelling. My playlist changes every day. It reflects my state of mind here and now, and the ideas, memories, joys and sorrows that currently occupy me. The last piece, Salve Regina, was only added late this evening, after I experienced Poulenc’s magnificent opera Dialogues des Carmélites at the Royal Danish Opera.«

Louise Beck is a scenographer, stage director and artistic director of OPE-N – and from the 2027 season, artistic director of Copenhagen Opera Festival. For nearly three decades, she has developed opera as a living and contemporary art form at the intersection of the established opera field and the independent music-theatre scene. She has created a number of critically acclaimed and award-nominated works, including Den Sidste Olie and LOL – Laughing Out Lonely, and, together with Niels Rønsholdt, stands behind the opera trilogy Den Stærkes Ret – Den Svages Pligt, whose second part will be presented at the University Library of Copenhagen during the 2026 festival.

playlist

24.02

My name is Nilza Costa – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music is my daily nourishment, helping me become a better person. It's a formula of emotions, full of energy, that gives me the courage to always have hope.«

Nilza Costa is a Brazilian singer and songwriter from Salvador de Bahia and now living in Ferrara, Italy, whose heart beats with the ancestral rhythms of Africa, rhythms she channels through her voice into a singular and deeply original artistic language. Her new album Cantigas – released in February 2026 on Brutture Moderne Records – is inspired by and dedicated to the Cantigas, or Orin, the sacred songs passed down through African languages, in this album Yoruba, Kimbundu and also Brazilian Portuguese. Nilza Costa’s voice has long given life to the revolution of a people who, through music and spirituality, have reclaimed their path toward emancipation. Her songs tell the stories of men and women torn from their homeland — narratives filled with both melancholy and hope.

Throughout her career, Nilza has collaborated with renowned artists such as Roy Paci, Etnia Supersantos, and Senegalese musician Elhadj Demba S. Gueye. With her current band, she has performed on numerous international stages (Austria, Germany, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, Belgium, Slovenia, and more) and has appeared at major festivals across Italy.

news

24.02

From Ice Opera to International Leadership

Louise Beck

When Louise Beck presented her first opera at Copenhagen Opera Festival in 2022, the audience was asked to bring ski wear and thermal suits. Den Sidste Olie (The Last Oil), about the colonisation of Greenland and the exploitation of nature, unfolded on the ice at Østerbro Skøjtehal. It marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration on newly written works that expand the frames and spaces of opera. Now that collaboration enters a new phase: from 1 September, Louise Beck will become the festival’s new artistic director.

playlist

22.02

Mit navn er Iris Gold – vil du se min playliste?

»Music for me is peace.«

Iris Gold is a Danish singer. She was born in London but raised in Christiania. She made her recording debut in 2015 with the single »Goldmine« and has since released a number of singles. Her debut album Planet Cool was released in 2019. She has just released the album Sugar on My Lips.

playlist

21.02

My name Astrid Kruse Jensen – would you like to see my playlist?

»Resonance – music is for me an indispensable inspiring resonance. In music, the big emotions fall into place, and the small ones bubble up. My grandfather introduced me to opera as a child – so loudly that my heart jumped in my ears, and I fell head over heels and deeply in love with these grand and dramatic compositions. Through it, I was introduced to the big emotions in the world – in music there was room for them in a way that I had not experienced anywhere else before.«

Astrid Kruse Jensen (b. 1975) is a Danish visual artist living in Copenhagen. Throughout her artistic career, she has been preoccupied with photography and its relationship to memory. With her poetic shifts of reality, she explores the borderland between the apparent and the hidden, between the real and the imaginary, between past and present. She has exhibited widely both in Denmark and internationally, with exhibitions in galleries and museums – from solo to group exhibitions in Slovenia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, India, China, Korea, Ghana, Canada, the USA and the UK. In Denmark, her works have been exhibited at, among others, the Brundlund Castle Art Museum, Esbjerg Art Museum, Heerup Museum, Rønnebæksholm, Brandts, Aros, Kunsten, Skagen Museum, Willumsen Museum, Sorø Art Museum, Odsherred Art Museum and Johannes Larsen Museum. Astrid Kruse Jensen is represented by Martin Asbæk Gallery in Copenhagen and Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm & Gothenburg.