Quatuor Bozzini performing “Long Gradus” and “Colliding Bubbles (Surface tension and release)”, 22th of January at Brorson’s Church – Review by Macon Holt, photo by Michael Slobodian Last Sunday evening, at Brorsons Kirke, Alice hosted the first-ever performance in Denmark by the internationally renowned, Montreal-based string quartet, Quatuor Bozzini (Clemens Merkel, Alissa Cheung, Stéphanie Bozzini, Isabelle Bozzini). The ensemble specialises in performing contemporary, experimental ...

Stefan Lakatos & Bengt Tribukait Festival of Endless Gratitude, October 22, Koncertkirken, Copenhagen – live report by Ivna Franic, photos: Keith Canisius After years of mostly taking place at KPH Volume, the 2020 edition of Festival of Endless Gratitude was held at Nørrebro’s Koncertkirken. This year, the awesomely titled festival took on a whole new shape, spanning several separate dates and three different venues. The journey started ...

Announced with a description that seemed simultaneously clear and cryptic, Antechamber promised to gather “thirteen local and international artists for a collective performance and banquet within the baroque interior of Ledreborg Slot.” The arrival at Forum in Copenhagen, the designated pick-up spot for the organized afternoon ride to the castle, was no less perplexing, with only a handful of us getting on the bus amidst a huge crowd of drunken people wearing funny costumes. Læs resten

Back in May, P/A contributing editor Macon Holt sat down to have a slow-motion chat over email with the founding member of the critically acclaimed Danish ambient and experimental band Vanessa Amara, Birk Gjerlufsen Nielsen. What started as an interview about the band’s new record, “Music for Acoustic Instruments and Feedback”, became a wide-ranging conversation about the problems with beauty, the intimacy of music and the sociality of sound. What follows is an edited version of this exchange rearranged for clarity.

A few years ago, the Danish Composers’ Society (Dansk Komponistforening) conducted a survey, which confirmed that opera houses, orchestras, ensembles, etc. are, in our eyes, playing far too little new music, and that female composers are grossly underrepresented. After the review was made public, I was asked in an interview whether I could hear a difference in music made by women and men—because, if there wasn’t actually a difference, then it didn’t make sense, in the eyes and ears of the interviewer, to single out or advocate for music made by women. That was, of course, a provocation, but can you point to any differences in music made by women and men?

“The Unknown Inside Us” is a conversation between composers Marcela Lucatelli and Bent Sørensen about the current state of diversity in Danish institutions. Læs resten

Macon Holt “On Popular Music” is the latest addition to the Passive/Aggressive small prints series on contemporary music theory and sonic fiction. In this series:Macon Holt “On Popular Music” (2021)Pauline Oliveros “Bryd stilheden” (2021)Steve Goodman “Sonisk krigsførelse” (2020)Éliane Radigue “Tiden er uden betydning” (2019)“K-Punk: Or how Mark Fisher intensifies the political possibilities of music” (2019) In On Popular Music (a title appropriated from ...

I guess we’ve all been there – that molten, not-necessarily hot-mess after endlessly pressing repeat on that latest track which happens to be able to take you on. Where and how does it happen? This fiddling of emotions between something that is your heart and something that is a heart in a pop production.

Feature by Macon Holt Behind the auspicious campuses of The University of Copenhagen and the national broadcaster, Denmark’s Radio, just far enough along an unassuming main road that stretches into what those who dwell on the mainland might call, deep Amager, we find one of the newest independent venues for artistic and musical residencies and documentation distribution, Polychrome. The building, which could easily be mistaken for purely ...

Esther “Esther” (Textur, 2020) – review by Macon Holt The second release from the Copenhagen based label Textur is the self-titled EP by Esther; a collaboration between producers Martin Messell and Andreas Høegh. Over the six tracks, the duo reconstitute the audio of live multi-instrumental improvisation into pieces of glitch infused ambience.