It is difficult to comprehend that Andreas Engström is no longer with us. Just a couple of months ago, he wrote – as he had done so many times before – with an ambitious proposal: he wanted to review a box set of twenty releases by Dror Feiler. In the same message, he mentioned plans to come to Aarhus for the recently concluded Spor Festival.

The stage was set for a special experience on Wednesday evening at KU.BE on Frederiksberg. In the borderland between tradition and joyful madness stood birthday celebrant Kasper Tranberg, blowing his trumpet. What emerged was an insistent blend of jazz and avant-garde, laced with understated humor and delivered by a virtuoso with a calm, unmistakably Danish presence. With a wry sense of ease, he made even the most complex passages surprisingly accessible.

Tranberg presented excerpts from 12 Melodic Illusions for Solo Improviser and Melodic Illusions for Sextet with both devotion and a glint in his eye. He demonstrated how the trumpet can stand alone while still conveying abstract emotional states. Sharp trills dissolved into growling undertones, merging with the resonance of the room. At times, he employed backing tracks, creating duets with himself.

The evening’s main attraction was the trio Mesmer – Emil Jensen, Victor Dybbroe, and Anders Filipsen – who performed works from their new piece Terrain Vague II, developed through several residencies in Northern Jutland. The three compositions moved within a field of electroacoustics, contemporary music, and analogue improvisation, carrying a distinctly cinematic and nature-infused sensibility. The sonic plunges into the Limfjord were particularly striking: Dybbroe’s metal percussion and Filipsen’s lapping synth textures carved out a dark, magnetic space. In the piece inspired by Aalborg Harbour, Jensen’s trumpet cut through with long, mist-laden tones, like signals drifting in from distant ships. The result was both enchanting and, at times, deeply inspiring. It was a concert that, for now, refuses to loosen its grip on me.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

The moon is a fundamental poetic motif. Its cycle pulls at both the tides and at us – within bodies and fluids alike. Composer Adrianna Kubica-Cypek and the vocal ensemble ÆTLA interpret this motif from Barbara Agertoft’s poem »Månen«. The composition is divided into »Månen« I, II, III and IV. It is a successful EP with a clear sense of purpose: the strong textual foundation establishes a distinct compositional direction without digressions, yet musically it cannot stand on its own.

The moon’s power to connect the inner and the outer emerges strongly in Agertoft’s poem: »and we stretched ourselves out, the inner in the outer all that we / bled into.« How better to convey this fundamental mood than through a vocal ensemble – individual bodies that bleed into an external, shared sound? Kubica-Cypek’s interpretation is dynamic, full of contrast and undulating, like flood and ebb. It begins with a piercing timbre of female voices, unfolding into crossing glissandi supported by deep, monotonously chanting male voices. At times, the sounds converge into harmonic chords; more often, the voices move in diverging directions in both volume and pitch, or insist on remaining in dissonance and repetition.

»Månen IV« concludes as an inversion of the sharp opening of »Månen I«, with subdued and dark sonorities that feel partially unresolved – as if the work is meant to be heard again from the beginning. In its form, the choral arrangement is cyclical, bringing out something understated in Agertoft’s poem. It demonstrates the quality of mutual interpretation: the art forms add something to one another.