The German Moers Festival is no longer primarily a jazz festival, but a curated laboratory for free improvisation, sound art, compositional music, and political absurdism. At times it feels forced. Most of the time, it is liberating.

Chopin was shattered, instruments reinvented, and time dissolved at Only Connect in Oslo.

At Borealis in Bergen, community is everywhere. But when everything is filtered through safety and intimacy, the music risks losing its necessity – and its bite.

Dark Music Days in Reykjavík offered everything from Bára Gísladóttir’s orchestral darkness to noise, seaweed and quiet song in Harpa – in a music scene where community matters as much as the export adventure.

The Only Connect festival in Stavanger transformed the city into a landscape of noise, poetry and bodily vibrations.

Michael Rebhahn anmelder Nordiske Musikdage 2016, der rummede næsten alt.