in brief

03.12.2021

At jage solen

Ars Nova Copenhagen: »Book of Mountains and Seas«

Marie-Louise Zervides. © Marie-Louise Zervides

Publikum på Takkelloftet blev suget ind i et sort og abstrakt mytisk univers til Book of Mountains and Seas, et musikdramatisk værk af komponisten Huang Ruo og dukkeførermesteren Basil Twist. Det var intenst og urovækkende med 2400 år gamle kinesiske skabelsesmyter, som blev fremmanet af seks dukkeførere, to slagtøjsspillere og tolv sangere fra Ars Nova Copenhagen. I det sorte tomrum dukkede sangernes oplyste ansigter frem som flyvende æg, kropsløse og uidentificerbare. Med flakkende øjne kiggede de ildevarslende op for at følge Paul Hillier, som dirigerede bag publikum, og det føltes voldsomt og næsten grænseoverskridende at sidde imellem dem i en konstant strøm af højkoncentreret chi-energi.

Dukkeførerne bevægede sig omkring koret og formåede at skabe liv i kæmper, fugle, sole, floder ved hjælp af døde træstammer, lysende rispapirslamper og bølgende silke. Det var imponerende effektfuldt, og dukkeførernes kroppe og bevægelser gav de store abstrakte myter en form for menneskelighed og anskuelighed.

Musikalsk var værket splittet mellem amerikansk minimalisme og kinesisk traditionalisme, og samspillet mellem slagtøj og stemmer bidrog til værkets ritualistiske karakter. Kinesiske sætninger blev sunget med nordisk accent og vokalfarve i konflikt, og fravalget af overtekster gjorde, at det var umuligt for et dansk publikum at tyde, hvad der blev sunget om. I stedet måtte man altså blot overgive sig til det uforståelige – klangene, stemningerne og drømmebillederne på scenen.

playlist

01.07

My name is Marie Arleth Skov – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music for me is medicine, comfort and a kick in the ass. Community, joy, a vent. Poetic political compass. And over the years, music has also become a kind of life chapter, linked to specific places, times and people.«

Marie Arleth Skov is a Danish art historian who has lived in Berlin since 1999. She works at the intersection of art, sexuality and music, with a primary historical focus on surrealism and the punk movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Her book Punk Art History was published by Intellect Books (UK) in 2023. Most recently, she has curated the exhibition UNRULY. The Body in Punk, which can be seen at Aros Kunstmuseum in Aarhus in the autumn of 2026. The catalogue for the exhibition is published by Marrow Press.

news

22.06

Free Improvisation Moves in Among Dim Sum and Hot Pots

自由即兴创作比性爱更好! – »Free improvisation is better than sex.« According to drummer Kresten Osgood, the saying is attributed to Confucius. Whether the ancient Chinese philosopher ever uttered those words is doubtful. But the quote perfectly captures the spirit of one of the most unusual events at this year's Copenhagen Jazz Festival.

From 7–11 July, pianist Søren Kjærgaard and drummer Kresten Osgood will take over CC Taste on Amagerbrogade, performing daily from 2–4 pm among diners, dim sum and steaming hot pots.

in briefrelease

19.06

The Machine's Melancholy

Soli City: »Poetics of a New Estate«

15 Love, 28.05

Martin Funder

With Soli City, the boundary between the organic and the synthetic is almost impossible to discern. What first appears to be an ordinary piano suddenly slips into a dizzying glissando. Soli City resembles a cyborg – half cello, half computer – fusing strings and voices into a seamless digital synthesis. The result is a science-fiction dream interrupted by surreal monologues and abruptly punctuated by the shrill click of a camera shutter.

That percussive camera-flash motif runs throughout both PARADOXE (2024) and the new album Poetics of a New Estate. Here, Harald Bjørn, the composer behind Soli City, further develops the sonic language introduced on its predecessor. Whereas PARADOXE staged the encounter between acoustic and digital sounds as an explicit confrontation, the two worlds now feel far more deeply integrated. Even the album's abrupt shifts seem entirely natural, as on »Rooms & Walls«, where a slurred vocoder and delicate string textures give way to an insistent drum groove.

Soli City's music embodies a distinctive form of self-reflection. As acoustic sounds bend, fracture and are interrupted by those recurring electronic flashes, we are reminded of Bjørn's remarkable ability to compose genuinely innovative music. Just as the most visionary science fiction remains rooted in the realities of its own time, every musical breakthrough carries echoes of the past. Soli City embraces these nostalgic resonances only to twist them into unfamiliar shapes.

With deceptively simple means, Poetics of a New Estate dissolves the boundary between nostalgia and contemporaneity. Like a true cyborg, Soli City reveals the divide between the digital and the acoustic to be less a fundamental opposition than an oddly arbitrary construction.

playlist

18.06

We are Selvhenter – would you like to see our playlist?

»Music, for us, is a fusion of different consciousnesses into a single shared focal point.«

The band Selvhenter was founded in 2010 by trombonist Maria Bertel, saxophonist Sonja LaBianca, violinist Maria Diekmann, and drummers Jaleh Negari and Anja Jacobsen. In 2017, Maria Diekmann left the group, and Selvhenter continued as a quartet.

Selvhenter’s sound is driven by a deep fascination with sonic textures, rhythmic displacements and polyrhythms, acoustic and electronic melodies, hard-hitting compositional choices, improvised beauty, and a sheer joy of creating and performing music. Selvhenter has played concerts both in Denmark and internationally. The group is also the nucleus of the artist collective Eget Værelse, which houses the members’ solo projects as well as collaborations such as Valby Vokalgruppe, SOLW, Nina Garcia & Maria Bertel, and G.E.K.

playlist

09.06

My name is Håkon Guttormsen – would you like to see my playlist?

»Music for me remembers.«

Håkon Guttormsen is a Norwegian composer and trumpeter living in Copenhagen. He is educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and the Royal Academy of Rhythmic Music. He primarily composes scores for ensembles as well as music drama and opera. He is currently working on a work for solo violin and electronics for ILK Music’s concert series during CPH Jazz 2026 and on his first symphonic work, which will premiere at the academy in 2027. He is a member of nyMusik’s composer group in Norway and a board member of UNM Denmark.