Så er der igen ’3 korte’ – Seismografs mini-interviewformat. Denne gang har vi bedt komponist Nicklas Schmidt komme med en anbefaling til et værk. Se her hvad han svarede:

1) Hvilket værk vil du gerne anbefale til andre?
   
Jeg vil gerne anbefale den amerikanske komponist John Adams' orkesterværk "Harmonielehre", skrevet i 1985. 

2) Hvorfor er dette værk særligt?
Den amerikanske minimalisme får i Adams' værk et særligt kraftfuldt og farvestrålende udtryk. Åbningens ikoniske kaskader af messing-akkorder rammer én med fuld styrke og er svære at ryste af sig, hvis man først bliver smittet af energiudladningen fra den fremadskridende puls. Adams skrev værket inspireret af flere drømme han havde, bl.a. en drøm hvor han så en olietanker sejlende nær San Francisco pludselig stige mod himlen i en abrupt bevægelse, som var den en rumraket. Drømmen og værket blev enden på en 18 måneders skriveblokade, som han havde lidt under. Og netop denne fornemmelse af lang tids opsparet energi, der pludselig finder udladning, finder jeg enormt fascinerende. 

3) Hvad arbejder du selv med lige nu?
Jeg har netop færdiggjort underlægningsmusikken til filmen "Flaskepost fra P" - filmatiseringen af Jussi Adler Olsens roman af samme navn, som er instrueret af norske Hans Petter Moland. Derudover er der 3. april uropførelse af værket "Tie up my Love's Tongue", som jeg har skrevet over et uddrag af Shakespeares "En skærsommernatsdrøm". Værket er bestilt af Kammerkoret Hymnia og eksperimenterer med grænselandet mellem kormusik og musikdramatik.  

Filmen Flaskepost fra P kan ses i biografer landet over.

Læs mere om den klassisk uddannede komponist Nicklas Schmidt her

© 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