what we immerse ourselves in

Anything Can Become Music – Even a Bunch Of Fake Frogs

At the Musica festival in Strasbourg, everything from children’s concerts to organ storms and performative string quartets turned into a playful exploration of sound, body, and community.

By Therese Wiwe Vilmar

review03.10

Microtones In the Coal Mines

Ostrava Days transformed the old mining town into a laboratory of sound, where contemporary music pressed its way out between dust, drones, and Dadaist madness.<br />

By Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
18.09

Sounding migrations

Deep listening and the acoustic phenology of whale song

By Alex South
review18.09

When Mysticism Loses Its Magic

This year’s Rued Langgaard Festival set out to open the gate to Danish mysticism, but at times disappeared itself into a haze of filler and gimmickry – though a few concerts stood strong.

By Jeppe Rönnow

Sound Bath At the Edge Of the Headland

Lost Farm Festival transformed an abandoned farm into a global gathering point for grief, anger and creativity – where concerts, rituals and installations turned Sjællands Odde into a new center of the world.

By Sanne Krogh Groth

review07.09

No Dying Diva in Paris – but Glitter, Dog Life and Office Humor

Copenhagen Opera Festival 2025 turned away from opera’s classical themes of fate and instead gave space to intimate music-dramatic experiments on queer identity, domestic violence, climate crisis, and mental illness.

By Jeppe Rönnow
review27.08

The Myth Of the Sound City By the Limfjord

Struer Tracks showed that even municipal branding can open new worlds when sound art gets involved – from glitching rat voices in the basement of the music school to subwoofers that shook the harbor.

By Jakob Gustav Winckler
review22.08

Opera’s Darkness Finds a Home in Savonlinna

Savonlinna’s castle festival lets Finnish national opera resonate between stone, lake, and summer night – and shows how dark dramas can mirror the soul of a people.

By Jeppe Rönnow

Walking Blind

At its best, the ambitious sound art walk »Witness Stand« at Refshaleøen pierces right into Copenhagen’s gentrification of the old industrial area. But does it realise that it is itself part of the problem?

By Sune Anderberg

comment13.08

I Most Certainly Will Not Stay Away From Your Theatre

A few days before this year’s Copenhagen Opera Festival begins, I, as a critic, have been asked to keep away from one of the festival’s most experimental performances at the theatre Sort/Hvid. This is a complete misunderstanding of the role of criticism.

By Sune Anderberg
essay04.08

Shoes For People Who Don’t Like Music

An anti-anthem for those who fall asleep at concerts and wake up with Cage talking nonsense.

By Douglas Kahn
review29.07

A Festival For Experiments – But Only When It Dares

Borealis in Bergen promises experimental music but falls short when it comes to traditional concert formats. Instead, magic emerges when the audience is invited out into the forest or into floating sound saunas.

By Patrick Becker