in brief

16.03.2021

Doing it anyway

Mikkel Schou: Debut Concert I-II

Mikkel Schou. © The Royal Danish Academy of Music

Mikkel Schou at his Debut Concert. © The Royal Danish Academy of Music

Schou is a powerhouse – unafraid to try new things, push himself in new directions, and pull us all along with him. We sorely need this energy, and we are lucky to have Schou and his do-it-anyway attitude.

But sometimes do-it-anyway needs tempering a little. Schou spoke about how he prepared this concert without guidance from his teachers. Brave, but I missed a guiding hand, a sharper focus. Both concerts were too long, and not always coherent. I sensed an artist who has defined himself by who he isn’t, but not yet by who he is.

Still, there were glimpses of a unique personality. Stefan Prins’ Generation Kill was an odd choice to start a debut concert with – Schou’s back was facing the audience, and the piece did little to highlight his skills as a performer (I also hated the piece, but that’s a personal matter). So I’m going to pretend that the concert started with Johannes Kreidler’s Guitar Piece – a vile little video-nasty to which Schou fully committed. A perfect manifesto – the absolute nerve of presenting two years of soloist class education by eating your guitar. I wish we’d had more of this playfulness.

But the energy sagged with a disparate selection of pieces that seemed more like a composer class concert than a presentation of a fresh artistic profile. Props to Schou for this – using your debut concert to focus on younger composers is bold, and should be celebrated. I just wish we’d had more Schou. My highlight was Emil Vijgen’s Photobooth Study, where Schou got to engage with his instrument in a different way, let loose a little, and be a soloist.

Schou may present himself as a force of nature, and he is, but there is an air of sensitivity (reticence, even) to his presence that does not always match up with the pieces being performed. Rob Durnin’s What, de facto could have benefitted from some more ‘fuck you’ attitude – the performance was oddly shy.

The late-night concert’s improvisation was fun: it’s always a joy to see Marcela Lucatelli and Henrik Olsson improvise (although Schou was the clear third wheel). However, the concert was overlong, and did not add much to Schou’s profile. I get that he wanted to show more sides of himself, but, again, it came at the expense of focus. Replacing Esben Nordborg Møller’s bloated Drones with Sarah Nemtsov’s lounge-jazz tinged Seven Colours from earlier would both shorten the concerts and sharpen the intention.

But these things are matters of polish. Schou is a rare and exceptional artist, and deserves accolades for his work and for these concerts. With more confidence and time to refine his vision, there is no doubt that Schou will be an essential fixture on the new music scene for years to come.

31.03

Local Forces Behind New Electronic Festival in Aalborg

On May 29, the Aalborg-based collective Datahaven9000 takes over the venue Skråen, transforming its main hall into a concentrated one-day festival of electronic music. The event is part of the concert series Bystanders #3, where the stage is handed over to local scenes rather than the venue’s in-house programming.

in briefrelease

30.03

Inside the Belly of an Alien Sonic Organism

Ideologic Organ / La Becque Editions, 27.03

Nikola Nedeljkovic Gøttsche

Two of contemporary music’s most uncompromising material thinkers meet on Music for Intersecting Planes: the American organist Kali Malone and the French cellist Leila Bordreuil. Malone works with oversaturated blocks of sound and sonic mass as a sustained pressure, while Bordreuil seeks friction – her cello a recalcitrant organism that creaks and resists.

What they share is an ascetic attention to the specificity of their instruments. The organ and the cello are pushed to their outer limits, where recognizability dissolves and overtones emerge like hidden entities.

The title pieces, »Intersecting Planes I» and »II«, unfold as undulating ruptures of sound: animalistic, almost elephantine cries that surge forward and recede again. Only rarely can the sound be identified as organ or cello. (»Pilots in the Night« comes closest to a familiar balance between the organ’s gravity and the cello’s resistance.) Otherwise, the music moves within a field between the metallic and the electronic, as if the sound originates neither from strings nor pipes.

It is not mass that is being explored here, but rather a kind of hollowness: an airiness that is not light, but permeated by an indeterminate resonance – something ancient, almost ceremonial. The album holds something far more porous and open than Malone and Bordreuil’s earlier works. The sound appears as a concave form, bending inward, like an absence of material. The sonic landscape carries its own dissolution within it as an inherent delay – as if the music exists, first and foremost, as the erosion of something one thought one heard.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

playlist

30.03

My name is Oscar O'Shea – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music, for me, is the rhythm, the pulse, and the energy of my life. It’s what drives me and can always energize me or colour my day in exactly the way I need. In a very busy, confusing, and chaotic life like the one I find myself in right now, music can be almost the only thing that slows my pace down, gives me access to actually feeling my emotions, and creates space for reflection. Music is history – it remembers moments and moods. It reflects cultures and can become the voice of a generation or an entire group that struggles to break through the mainstream or challenge the status quo. For me, music is one of the primary ways I can influence the society I’m part of – whether by supporting important art that we can see ourselves in, or by bringing large groups of people together around something meaningful and communal. Music, to me, is freedom. Freedom to dance without inhibition, to let the tears flow freely, and the freedom to play air drums at full speed on my yellow racing bike as I ride down Mejlgade.«

Oscar O’Shea is a graduate of the Kaospilot programme, with a focus on innovation in the cultural and music industries. Through SPOT Festival, he works as project manager for the international initiative Live Incubator and the hyper-local event cSPOT at Bowlinghallen. Oscar is a documentary filmmaker and will graduate this summer as part of the first cohort of documentary producers from the independent film school DOKTRIN.

He recently founded the independent Aarhus-based agency Okay Management, which works with artist management, booking, film production, and music releases for a wide range of artists. Through the agency, the venue Okay is opening in the new Stenbro district near Nørreport in Aarhus. The space will showcase Aarhus talent, with a focus on bringing together the city’s emerging cultural scene and building a sustainable music industry from the ground up through knowledge sharing, transparency, and collaboration across the underground and grassroots levels.

In recent years, he has worked as a booker and programme curator for Sydhavns Festival, Gemini Festival, and a wide range of other events and initiatives. His heart beats for DIY and indie culture—for independence and collaboration rather than competition. And although Oscar has lived in many different countries and worked around the world, he always returns to Aarhus—precisely because of the sense of community and the city’s DIY spirit.

in brieflive

28.03

Opera or Exam Preparation?

Mauro Patricelli, Signe Asmussen, Matias Seibæk, Anders Banke, Thommy Andersson, Jessica Lyall et al.: »Tarantula«

Thorvaldsens Museum, 27-28.03.26

Sofus Preisel

Tarantula is presented as a »documentary opera«, a genre created by Mauro Patricelli. The work takes its starting point in tarantism – the myth of the spider’s bite, which triggers madness and the ecstatic dance that heals – and intertwines it with A Doll’s House and Napoli by August Bournonville. The ambition is clear: to reflect female experiences of mania, oppression, and interpretation throughout history. The scenography reinforces the documentary approach. Five suspended screens display text, archival material, a dancer, and a professor character who didactically explains the work’s sources. At the same time, four musicians and the soprano Signe Asmussen stand in a row.

The music alternates between long, bare lines and repetitive, rhythmically complex figures clearly inspired by the tarantella. Yet this very complexity becomes a drawback: the reliance on click-track and sheet music lends a mechanical quality that clashes with the work’s purportedly demonic and physical energy. The main issue is the balance between explanation and interpretation. The professor figure constantly dictates the reading, undermining the work’s own critical ambitions – not least when it simultaneously critiques a »male lens«. The engagement with Ibsen also feels simplified, almost misread, functioning more as illustration than genuine interpretation.

The libretto – largely composed of historical sources and academic language – weighs heavily on the dramaturgy. When a letter about Ibsen’s knowledge of tarantism is elevated to a dramatic climax, it becomes difficult to grasp what is truly at stake. That the text is sung, projected, and handed out in libretto form only intensifies the sense of redundancy. In the end, one is left with the feeling of having attended a lecture rather than an opera. My final note before the curtain fell: Will this be on the test?

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

playlist

27.03

My name is Alice Ai – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music for me is a place to meet both oneself and others in emotions. It is freedom, community, individuality, language and expression.«

Danish artist Alice Ai combines emotional depth with electronic impact and a punk energy. Her sound moves in the field of tension between the vulnerable and the confrontational – between the human and the synthetic. This duality is embedded in her name: »Alice« refers to curiosity and adventure, and »Ai« points towards the artificial and technological. Together they form the foundation for a contrasting universe that permeates both her music and artistic persona. Alice Ai will play at this year’s Roskilde Festival.