»Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to its own vomit.«

No, this is not a quote by Marie Koldkjær Højlund. She does know its author, Samuel Beckett, who in 1930 published an essay on Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, pointing to the power of habit to trap people in uncomfortable patterns. Højlund is an associate professor of sound studies and thus has a broad academic frame of reference. Still, she does not know this particular quote when I (naturally, a little way into our conversation) cautiously introduce it at the small café on Jægergårdsgade in Aarhus, which – like many other mornings – forms the setting for Højlund’s itinerant working life.

Prologue – Warsaw, September 2025

»We only rehearse on farms and in hotels,« says Eivind Buene as he lands in Warsaw. As usual for this band – Tværs – Kullberg’s hotel room is transformed into a rehearsal space, this time with a view of the Palace of Culture in the Polish capital. And after the concert at Opera Warszawska, 400 Polish audience members drift singing into the night – the melody was written on a dusty roadside somewhere in Louisiana.

Tværs began as an idea dreamed up by cellist Jakob Kullberg. Two years earlier, he had persuaded composers Niels Rønsholdt and Eivind Buene, guitarist Jakob Bangsø, and the Copenhagen-based Canadian Bradley Axmith to join him on a road trip through the American South to explore a single question: Could they become a band?

Aldrig har jeg før befundet mig så yderligt på Refshaleøen, når jeg altså ikke har været på Copenhell: Jeg er nærmest helt ude ved den nordlige ende af den, da jeg en smule tøvende går rundt om nogle tilforladelige bygninger for at finde det øvelokale, som den taiwansk-danske slagtøjsspiller og komponist Ying-Hsueh Chen har sat mig stævne i. Heldigvis regner det ikke, selvom himlen er meget grå, og heldigvis er det ikke rigtigt koldt endnu, selvom der er små stænk af kulde i novemberluften. 

I netop samme øjeblik som min telefon pludselig synes, den skal udsende en alarmlyd, bliver jeg råbt an fra et nærliggende hus. Med sine store briller, stor hue og en forventningsfuld attitude kommer Chen mig i møde. Vi har mødtes en enkelt gang før, men det ligger otte-ni år tilbage, og vi når aldrig at tale om det, fordi så meget andet tager over. 

Det burde sige sig selv: Ja, kvinder komponerer opera. Fantastisk opera. Og det har de gjort igennem hele kunstartens 400 år lange historie. Skulle det alligevel komme bag på nogen, skyldes det formentlig, at ældre opera komponeret af kvinder stort set aldrig bliver opført herhjemme. 

Bladrer man i Dansk Komponistforenings nylige Repertoirestatistik for sæsonerne 22/23 og 23/24 er der særligt ét diagram, der skriger til himlen: kønsfordelingen i opera komponeret før 1994. Her fremgår det, at mikroskopiske 0,3% af den samlede operaproduktion på 982 timer og 12 minutter er med en kvinde som komponist. Lidt over tre timers spilletid kunne det blive til – cirka det samme som en halv Wagner-premiere. 

Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek (Seismograf):

How are your ears? How did 2025 sound like to you?

Bastian Zimmermann (Positionen):

This year, something essential shifted. For obvious reasons, I finally moved from Spotify to Tidal – which meant leaving behind years of saved albums and playlists and starting from zero. It brought back a memory from when I was seventeen or eighteen, when a hard drive crash erased my entire archive of ripped CDs from the jazz club where I used to play. A loss that felt both devastating and strangely liberating.

There is something refreshing in starting over, but also something painful. Maybe that’s why I began buying vinyl again – selectively, intentionally – replacing albums that have accompanied me for years, even decades.

The first half of the year was shaped by my own festival. I barely traveled, instead immersing myself in the sound worlds of the artists at Musik Installationen Nürnberg. 

A few years ago, I threw myself into the adventure of learning to play the church organ. In conversations with friends about this project, I have often reflected on how the organ is an instrument that at once appears extremely niche and utterly commonplace. For many, it is surrounded by a certain mysterious aura, and yet air is blown through its pipes Sunday after Sunday in every corner of the country, and organ music keeps a multitude of musicians occupied. The organ exists on a paradoxical threshold between the esoteric and the democratic.

It is precisely this paradoxical threshold that the Organ Sound Art Festival manages to activate – a task the festival has undertaken for the past ten years within the walls of Koncertkirken in Nørrebro, Copenhagen. Just as organs – at least the large ones – are integrated into the space in which they sound, as a kind of architecture within the architecture, so too does the Organ Sound Art Festival seem conceived specifically for Koncertkirken’s room. Koncertkirken itself occupies a threshold between the sacred function to which the former church space points back and the secular venue it houses today – a venue that also actively explores a fruitful dialogue between early music and new experiments.

MINU Festival for Expanded Music er i de senere år blevet en fast bestanddel af Københavns kalender. Under kuratorisk ledelse og organisering af Mikkel Schou, Dylan Richards og Roberto Besler har festivalen konsekvent præsenteret programmer med musikalske opførelser, der udfordrer kunstformernes grænser. Værkerne stiller ofte spørgsmål til publikum – ikke kun om, hvad kunst kan, men også om de betingelser i verden, som denne musik udspringer af.

Årets MINU virkede strammere kurateret end tidligere udgaver. På en velkommen måde syntes den også mere frigjort fra den åbne frustration over institutionskritik, som tidligere har været et dominerende tema. I stedet for at være noget, kunstnerne var tvunget til at reagere imod, var problemerne ved institutionaliseret kunstproduktion blevet festivalens udgangspunkt – en slags indsats, som værkerne kunne udforske mulige »hvad så nu?«-scenarier ud fra.

Man kan formentlig henføre fremkomsten af lydbiografen til den såkaldte krig mod opmærksomheden, vi hele tiden hører om. Mens techvirksomheder finjusterer deres midler til at holde os fanget i dopaminafhængighed, fjerner universiteterne lange klassiske tekster fra pensum. Ingen kan længere koncentrere sig om noget som helst, og modbevægelsen bliver disse fællesskaber, hvor man mødes for at sidde i mørket og hengive sig til en plade, berøvet muligheden for at gøre andet end lige præcis det. 

Allerede i 80’erne og 90’erne, dengang vi stadig var optimistiske på teknologiens vegne, havde den finske producer og lydkunstner Mika Vainio (1963-2017) gang i noget tilsvarende. I sin lejlighed i Oslo afholdte han lytteseancer for sine venner, og blev efter sigende voldsomt irriteret, hvis nogen foretog sig noget som helst andet end at lytte i koncentreret tavshed.

Derfor er det logisk nok en lydbiograf, man har stablet på benene i Kunsthal Charlottenborg, hvor man hylder Vainio gennem seks playlister under den lidt bombastiske titel Museum of Sound. Vil man høre det hele, skal man afsætte omkring 7,5 time, hvilket nok er i overkanten for de fleste. Projektet er snarere lagt an på, at man dumper ind et tilfældigt sted og bliver hængende i mørket så længe, man lader sig indfange.

It is rare that a concert engages the audience’s sense of smell. Just as rare is the sight of musicians in headbands and gym shorts performing a two-hour workout routine – not only pushing the narrative, but the smell of sweat, all the way over the edge of the stage. Current Resonance didn't stay in their lanes, and in the work Musical Workout they invited the audience onto the floor to take part in an exquisitely awkward exercise session. It was grotesque – and very funny.

Graft, a piece situated somewhere between performance art, music theatre and a PE lesson, consisted of five works, all exploring the same theme: »work«, and with a neurotic, Monty Python-esque persistence, the ensemble pushed the concept to its extremes. Graft exposed the modern human’s fetishisation of hard work – our obsession with finding meaning and purpose. At the centre of the increasingly distorted narratives stood the four composers, each in comic denial, like four modern Sisyphuses.

The noise from Lilleøre – the ferry between Aarhus and Samsø – has a strange calm to it. A monotonous, metallic humming that rocks you out of the city and into another rhythm. Samsø wakes slowly. The rain lies like a thin veil over the fields. A chef makes noise in the kitchen of the Samsø Badehotel. He is from New York. He has worked at ElBulli.

The vegetable stalls stand like small islands along the roads, and on the signs, both Polynesian massage and wine from Château Alstrup are promised. Even the royal couple has been here – on Thursday, for a concert with Poul Krebs at Hotel Brundby, the legendary rock hotel. In front of the hotel stands a white artificial cow with musical notes on its body, as if the music has stuck to its skin.

»GRØN MUSIK [GREEN MUSIC] is a four-day manifestation on Samsø of sound art and music that has a close collaborative relationship with nature!« proclaimed the invitation from the festival’s initiators, the association Terraform.