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Om Seismograf

© Lars Skaaning
mindeord

Playful Seriousness: Per Nørgård In Memoriam

A personal tribute by cellist Jakob Kullberg to a 92-year-old composer who never stopped listening, sharing, and laughing – turning every collaboration into an invitation to explore the unknown.

Af
  • Jakob Kullberg
28. Maj 2025

My sister Maj Kullberg, and I are second generation Nørgård collaborators having been brought up with the composer as a regular guest in our childhood home as he taught composition in our hometown as well as collaborated on new works with our parents. 

I remember a frost touched January morning at Frederiksdal Manor on Lolland, as my string quartet and I were awaiting the arrival of Per Nørgård. We had already worked extensively with the composer on his string quartets and had had the honour of having his 10th quartet, Harvest Timeless, dedicated to us. 

With Per humour has always been an integral part of our communication and this morning was no different. My sister and I picked him up from the ferry together with our host, Christine Krabbe, who herself has been instrumental in many Nørgård oriented projects such as the documentary film Les Archers. However, instead of taking him to the beautiful manor where our three day workshop would take place, my quartet, Mrs Krabbe and I had decided to pull the old composer’s leg and take him to an industrial cow stable through backways that would obscure that mansion.

Læs videre
© Miklos Szabo / Det Kongelige Teater
kritik

An Operatic Vision Lost in Translation

Bent Sørensen’s new operatic collaboration with Jon Fosse falls short of what it might have been

Af
  • Andrew Mellor
26. Maj 2025
© Københavns Museum
kritik

The City that made Noise into History

At the Copenhagen Museum, the city’s forgotten soundscapes are brought to life – from street cries and gongs to nervous night sirens – in an exhibition that lets the echoes of the past resonate in present-day ears.

Af
  • Henrik Marstal
24. Maj 2025

Kortkritik

© Tuomas Tenkanen

Emergent Music

»A poetic and precise sonic laboratory, where music emerges in hesitation and grows like a living creature.«

Kortkritik

© PR

Echoes from a Forgotten Time

»’Phantom Orchestra’ is a dazzling, slightly mad experiment, driven by a will to create harmony in chaos.«

© Shutterstock

Sounding Women's Work II

»You look like 50% of the world's population, but are professionalised as a minority« – peer reviewed academic articles and audio papers on gender, technology and infrastructure in Nordic sound art and experimental music.

Peer

© Login/Shutterstock.com

Sounds of Science

6 April 2021 – Our new peer-reviewed special edition on composition, recording and listening as laboratory practice. Ten audio papers, two in-depth articles and an introduction by editors Henrik Frisk and Sanne Krogh Groth.

‘Every time we listen to music or make music, we are at the same time creating social relations or socialities’

Gender and social relations in New Music: Tackling the octopus
A conversation with Georgina Born

Collection

Marcela Lucatelli. © Marcela Lucatelli

Meet the composers

Some of them are just getting started. Others are well-established names on the international scene. But what are their thoughts on the music they create and the world they live in? Read a selection of our most interesting pieces on composers and composing.

Guide

© PR

My name is Sven Helbig – would you like to see my playlist?

»Every moment is nothing but the uttermost end of the past. Music makes this edge wide and beautiful.«

© PR

Female Composers in 20th-century Electronic Music

© PR

On the Typical, the Indistinct and the Impersonal in the Sonic Arts, Media and Auditory Culture

About

Seismograf

Welcome to Seismograf

Seismograf is an independent Danish web magazine focusing on the newest developments within the arts of sound. On this page you will find our most recent English-language content as well as collections on selected topics. Want to know more about Seismograf? Then go on and scroll down to the bottom of this page.

Collection

© Anna Cokorilo

Around the world with Seismograf

Seismograf may be located in Denmark, but brilliant music is performed all over the world. Which means we often cover events in places far, far away, as illustrated by this selection of articles.

Kortkritik

Yanling. © Christian Neuenschwander

The Perfect Storm

»Over time, the album grows into a brilliant piece of contemporary art, only suffering from slightly too perfect production and somewhat grandiose gestures.«

Essays

Barents Spektakel. © Nima Taheri

2024: An Earful of Chaos 

Chaotic times call for chaotic music. But also soft techno, flutists and yoga balls. Jennifer Gersten and Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek wrap up the musical year in a conversation between New York and Aarhus.
Jennifer Gersten 29. december 2024
Valentina Goncharova. © Shukai / Quietus

Gender, Canon, and Eastern European Women Pioneers of 20th-century Electronic Music

Feminist readings of 20th-century electronic music history cannot avoid questioning the notion of canon and canon-oriented historiographical practices. Shedding light on women composers from non-Western contexts can further come in handy in searching for ways to engage with the history of gender in music beyond mainstreaming and the rhetoric of exceptionalism.
Marta Beszterda van Vliet 24. november 2024
© Lisbeth Damgaard

Another day, another rediscovery of Else Marie Pade

A good twenty years after the first rediscovery of Else Marie Pade as an electronic pioneer, she is now being branded as a visionary acoustic composer. It seems we never get tired of rewriting the story of this special artist – and writing ourselves into it.
Sune Anderberg 20. august 2024
© PR

Death and Masochism

Efterskrift enjoy the discomfort of pleasure postponed or expressed through the pain of the feeling of something missing. At the new festival MINU, the Aarhus-based ensemble will perform a concert with a simple message: everything good is allowed to die.
Macon Holt 4. november 2022
© PR

Actual Friends, Making New Maps from the Future

How do you make sense in a world filled with tragedy, grief and institutional control? In their work for MINU festival composer Conor McLean and performer Nikolaus von Bemberg turn to Charlie Kaufman’s film, »Synechdoche, New York« for answers.
Macon Holt 4. november 2022
Cover til The Sounds of Earth Record. ©  Wikimedia Commons

Alien Frequencies

The mixtape has always been a format with which to swagger and seduce, meant to project both front and vulnerability. How, though, might we interpret a sampler from another star system; what might its effect on us be? A journey with Ziggy Stardust, Yuri Gagarin, afrofuturists and intellectuals from Mars.
Ben Carver 27. Oktober 2022
© Laura Toxværd

»My pregnant body changed things – composing with the process«

Sounding Women's Work | In a situation where the gender balance is skewed in favor of men, it takes action to change the balance so no one has a special advantage, says composer, saxophonist and author Laura Toxværd. 
Laura Toxværd 25. Maj 2022
© Eget værelse

On stage we are four bodies

Sounding Women's Work | Meshes is a performance groupe with drummers and dancers. They work with the relation between body and sound and investigates how the movement of the body can be translated into a score for a drum set, and how the sound of a drum set can be translated into a score for movement.
Meshes 10. Februar 2022
© Soffi Chanchira Larsen

»Had I run around with the others, would I have become a composer at all?«

Sounding Women's Work | Mette Nielsen is occupied finding ways to create space for the small and fragile sounds in the music. She works with both completely traditional scores and more open notations and easy staging of sound.
Mette Nielsen 10. Februar 2022

Reviews

© Miklos Szabo / Det Kongelige Teater

An Operatic Vision Lost in Translation

Bent Sørensen’s new operatic collaboration with Jon Fosse falls short of what it might have been.
Andrew Mellor 26. Maj 2025
© Københavns Museum

The City that made Noise into History

At the Copenhagen Museum, the city’s forgotten soundscapes are brought to life – from street cries and gongs to nervous night sirens – in an exhibition that lets the echoes of the past resonate in present-day ears.
Henrik Marstal 24. Maj 2025
© Julien Benhamou

Punk is Dead and Opera is Not Feeling Well Either

Damon Albarn’s Mozart spin-off »The Magic Flute II« is replete with synths and spectacle, but does it truly capture opera’s essence – or merely its aesthetics?
Aleksi Barrière 2. april 2025
© Elin Berge

From Factory Floor to Operatic Frustration

Jenny Wilson’s first opera – an adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek’s »Women as Lovers« – delivers sharp theatricality and biting satire but struggles to find its musical voice.
Andrew Mellor 1. april 2025
© Michael Miller/Pikene på Broen

Who said that simplicity should be simple?

Three albums with music for string quartet – and the likes – by Jürg Frey, Simon Christensen, and Anders Lauge Meldgaard each approach musical simplicity in their own way. But they aim for entirely different things with it.
Sune Anderberg 30. Marts 2025
© »Toroidal Bodies«, Sammy Lee, 2023

When Sound Becomes Body and Struggle

»Bodies of Sound« gathers reflections from women and non-binary individuals on sound as experience, strategy, and resistance. This book should be read by anyone interested in sound as something beyond just music.
Henrik Marstal 25. Marts 2025
© Høgni Heinesen

Universal Music with Local Truths 

Local traditions play a central role in the second-ever Faroese opera, in which Sunleif Rasmussen reclaims a local story made famous by Wagner.
Andrew Mellor 13. Januar 2025
Ersan Mondtagn's opera work »Monument eines unbekannten Menschen«. © Thomas Aurin

Head to Venice and Hear Foreign Songs Everywhere

War, refugees, and destruction are inescapable at the Venice Biennale. You can feel it, see it, hear it – it's all-encompassing. Has Venice ever been this filled with sound?
Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek 18. Oktober 2024
© Udo Siegfriedt

»Ist nix für Frauen« 

Powerful Rhythms and Empowered Voices dominated at the opening night of Heroines of Sound Festival in Berlin.
Giada Dalla Bontà 6. august 2024

Interviews

© CPH:DOX / Katrine Thude

From Darkness to Magic: Warren Ellis and the Journey Toward the Light

After a brutal depression, Warren Ellis returns with renewed strength – and deep gratitude. The 60-year-old Australian multi-instrumentalist opens up about pain, love, animals, creativity, and Nina Simone’s sacred chewing gum.
Peter Albrechtsen 15. Maj 2025
© PR

The Useless Hell

In the musical theater performance »Calls to this number are being diverted« Matthew Grouse puts the absurd working life of late modernity under the microscope.
Henrik Marstal 16. Januar 2024
© Kristof Lemp

Side entrance to the New Music Scene

Slowly the idea of universality is dissolving, experimental music exists everywhere and in every genre – Abbasi, Eizirik and Sanchéz-Chiong in conversation.
Jan Topolski 29. november 2023
© UKRAiNATV

UKRAiNATV – the future starts here

They mix art, activism and technology to create a dialogue across Europe. Meet the internet TV project UKRAiNATV, featured at Unsound 2023.
Giada Dalla Bontà 5. Oktober 2023
© Denys Tsybulko

»We love to talk about solidarity«

The problem is not a lack of interest in Eastern Europe, but in a scarcity of access to its narratives and perspectives, says Ukrainian writer and curator Mariana Berezovska ahead of Unsound Festival 2023.
Giada Dalla Bontà 2. Oktober 2023
© PR

»I love freedom and I know why«

For months Ukrainian born composer and sound artist Katarina Gryvul didn't force herself to write, as she didn't want to associate war with music. It all changed: »An artist cannot be out of politics now«.
Marta Konieczna 1. december 2022
Hania Rani. © Martyna Galla

»I can’t kill anybody with my profession« 

It took Hania Rani many years to acknowledge that she feels much more comfortable in a music other than classical music. However, it lives – like a heavy rucksack – in the Polish artist's piano music, which is allowed to be called poppy. Now she is visiting Copenhagen and the new borderless music festival Resonator in Odense.
Mathias Monrad Møller 3. november 2022
© Malin Annie Jansson

»I would very much like to survive, thanks in advance«

Two years ago, James Black began writing an article series on religion in the Danish composer scene. Getting more and more angry, Black finally had to give up. Why?
Sune Anderberg 27. august 2022
© Tom Ingvardsen

Oil, Opera and the history that haunts us

Niels Rønsholdt's new work, »The Last Rites«, is a pessimistic satire on human nature. The opera takes place in Østerbro Ice Skating Rink, so the audience can feel the cold mechanics of desire and the growing chaos on our planet. Do we really need winter all year round?
Macon Holt 23. august 2022

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Seismograf is supported by
The Danish Arts Foundation, The Danish Composers’ Society/Koda Culture and The Independent Research Fund Denmark.