in brief

23.08.2023

Klarinettens længsel hos vidt forskellige komponister

Jonas Frølund: »Solo Alone and More«

Klarinetbegavelsen Jonas Frølund viser hvor stærk meget forskellige komponister fra de sidste små 100 år spiller sammen. Solo Alone and More er båret af en generøs glæde over instrumentet – men også af en længsel. Carl Nielsens solokadence fra klarinetkoncerten længes mod humor. Bent Sørensens smukke, let tågede klange længes mod en folketone, og herfra tager Frølund os umærkeligt til Mette Nielsens meget fine Alone fra 2021, der som et stille råb fra mørket søger efter mening. Med dobbelttoner udforsker hun grænserne i instrumentet (her en basset-klarinet).

Først herefter giver Frølund os klassiske mesterværker som klarinetsolosatsen fra Messiaens Kvartet til Tidens ende – og den melankolske skalmeje fra 3. akt af Wagners Tristan & Isolde (arrangeret for klarinet). Den ene med længsel mod den endelige befrielse, den anden en dødelig såret Tristans længsel efter at Isoldes skib skal vise sig i det fjerne. Hvorfor spiller de så utrolig godt op ad Gunnar Bergs soloklarinetstykke (der dog er for lang), Poul Ruders’ Tattoo for One og ikke mindst Simon Steen-Andersens tyve år gamle De profundis? Fordi Jonas Frølund er en musiker, der ser et dybere lag eller to ned, og får fat i musikkens kerne gennem sit instrument. Hernede taler mange komponister med hinanden – selvom de er adskilt af mange år eller af døden selv. Sammensætningen giver mening.

Frølund har ikke så meget luft på sin tone, der ikke er lige så varm som fx hos klarinetgeniet Martin Fröst. Men han får inderlighed og musikfilosofisk mening ud af toner, der ikke i sig selv lægger op til den store sammenhæng. Jonas Frølund har en længsel mod at formidle stor musik gennem sit enkle rørinstrument, og det lykkes med den særlige samling af værker her.

playlist

03.04

My name is James Black – would you like to see my playlist?

»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.

playlist

02.04

My name is Christian Juncker – would you like to see my playlist?

»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.

playlist

01.04

My name is Idan Elmalem – would you like to see my playlist?

»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.

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