A few years ago, I threw myself into the adventure of learning to play the church organ. In conversations with friends about this project, I have often reflected on how the organ is an instrument that at once appears extremely niche and utterly commonplace. For many, it is surrounded by a certain mysterious aura, and yet air is blown through its pipes Sunday after Sunday in every corner of the country, and organ music keeps a multitude of musicians occupied. The organ exists on a paradoxical threshold between the esoteric and the democratic.

It is precisely this paradoxical threshold that the Organ Sound Art Festival manages to activate – a task the festival has undertaken for the past ten years within the walls of Koncertkirken in Nørrebro, Copenhagen. Just as organs – at least the large ones – are integrated into the space in which they sound, as a kind of architecture within the architecture, so too does the Organ Sound Art Festival seem conceived specifically for Koncertkirken’s room. Koncertkirken itself occupies a threshold between the sacred function to which the former church space points back and the secular venue it houses today – a venue that also actively explores a fruitful dialogue between early music and new experiments.