in brief
15.02.2023

Draculas mixtape 

Aarhus Teater/Den Jyske Opera: »Dracula«
© Emilia Therese
© Emilia Therese

Hvis nu verdens yndlingsvampyr selv kunne vælge et soundtrack til sit liv og levned, hvordan ville det lyde? Sådan en forfængelig type – og det er Dracula (Jakob Madsen Kvol) i denne opsætning, hvidklædt aristokrat men også uplettet engel – går selvfølgelig op i ambience. »When I Am Laid In Earth (Dido’s Lament)« og bidder fra fem lækre dødsmesser dirrer bag ordene som ørehængende underlægning. 21 sangere fra Den Jyske Opera og en pianist bebor smukt scenen og næsten hvert minut i Martin Lyngbos version af dramaet, vi alle kender. Men det frapperende er, at vi netop også via den allestedsnærværende lyd mærker, hvad der sker, når en epidemisk frygt kortslutter et samfund. 

»Blodet er livet,« fortæller Dracula. Vi ser Kvol (tidligere Bowie-inkarnation i Aarhus Teaters Lazarus) dirigere sangerne. Dracula er typen, der står ved boomboxen og vil male Transsylvanien og London rød; tvinge gæsterne til at danse efter sin drabelige pibe. »Se la mia morte brami« er selvfølgelig med på lyddesigner Marcus Aurelius Hjelmborgs Dracula-mix, for Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) var både elsket komponist og morder, ja, de über-passionerede madrigalkomponister siges at have levet i en forvirret tid, der skabte spaltede individer. Psyken, i al sin pragt og grimhed, er også begravet i lyd. 

Forestillingen Dracula – ej opera, ej musical, nok noget tredje – er skabt før corona og krig. Som et sansende menneske i 2023 kan man ikke undgå at blive berørt af musikkens sofistikerede, næsten elektriske elegance, som lader os mærke, at volden er på vej. Alt det, vi kender, er ved at vælte.

© Niklas Ottander

»Music is a deep, but not serious, spiritual practice, in which creator, collaborator, and consumer alike are their own personal pope.«

James Black (b. 1990) is a composer, performer, and artistic director of Klang Festival – Copenhagen Experimental Music. Originally from Bristol, England, they moved to Copenhagen in 2013. Black's works have attracted a large amount of attention both nationally and internationally for their signature combination of artistic courage and vulnerability, described by the Danish Arts Council as »a universe of real madness where everything goes«. Their work is a deep and personal exploration of topics such as religion, loss, and queer identity, that is unafraid to be stupid or serious in any direction.

© Christian Klintholm

»Music is just something for me.«

Christian Juncker is a Danish musician and songwriter who has released a number of Danish-language albums. He debuted in 1995 with the band Bloom. Together with his friend Jakob Groth Bastiansen, he formed the duo Juncker in 2002. He is also behind the Christmas carol »Luk julefreden ind« from 2024.

© Guy Wasserman

»Music, for me, reveals the emptiness of boundaries and definitions – in consciousness, in space, and in music itself.«

Idan Elmalem is an oud player and composer working across world and popular music, now presenting his debut instrumental EP and live performance project. Following years of collaboration within the Israeli music scene, he turns toward a more personal and intimate musical voice, blending traditional oud with a contemporary sensibility. Influenced by his studies with master Nissim Dakwar, Elmalem’s music explores the space between tradition and innovation. His debut EP, Time, features three live-recorded pieces that move between past, present, and future, combining classical Arabic and Persian elements with jazz, minimalism, and cinematic sound. Based in Tel Aviv, Elmalem draws on his Moroccan-Danish heritage in his work. He is a graduate of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Ethnomusicology at the University of Haifa, alongside his work as a player and composer.

© PR

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.

© PR
© PR

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