Today's experimental composers are characterized by a high degree of individualism. While their primary aim isn't necessarily to stand out, in reality, they constitute an exceptionally diverse and eclectic community of classical composers. Their unique qualities contribute to an incredibly rich and diverse environment for art music in Denmark today. For many, it is a matter of entirely new perspectives on music.
Mads Emil Dreyer
Mads Emil Dreyer’s (b. 1986) music exists as much in its own sure forms as in the listener’s individual response to them. He often sets up a dialogue between electroacoustic and acoustic entities, and his works are characterized by lightness and brightness, beauty and poetry.
Matias Vestergård
"I always think of my music as melodies or polyphony, but it isn't fully satisfactory to me, just to write a beautiful melody," Matias Vestergård (b. 1989) tells about his approach to instrumental music. "I like it when the melody is constrained by some kind of obstacle that makes it particularly precious." Vestergård is a significant new voice on the new music scene.
Mette Nielsen
In Mette Nielsen's (b. 1985) music, the extreme details are paramount. She often works with what she calls the almost unison or imperfect unison – a state of friction that opens up a space where small differences and micro-tones are made audible. She has a fascinating gift for writing very beautifully without pathos.
Bára Gísladóttir
In the works of Bára Gísladóttir (b. 1989), melody is often downplayed, the emphasis instead on texture, dynamics, and unfiltered expression. In her pieces, time is as likely to move in circles as it is moving forwards towards a distinct goal, and her music comprises distortion-heavy sound masses, all-embracing beauty and a self-reflecting calm.
Frej Wedlund
The works of Frej Wedlund (b. 1991) evoke a sense of ambiguity, exposedness and quiet tension, always seeking to explore the intimate in music and sound. His piece Crumblings deals with fragments, disparate materials, and drastic, form-wise shifts of the treatment of musical time
James Black
With James Black (b. 1990), you encounter a universe of real madness where ‘everything goes’. Where DIY video, hopeless choreographed performances, and accurately notated score music – among many other things – in a deliberately unsightly mix make up the work. The impossible is a deliberate dogma resulting in a unified expression, which is chaotic and almost gallows humorous, but where one senses a composer who ultimately has complete control over the final result
Greta Eacott
In her compositions, Greta Eacott (b. 1990) works with simplistic, structured forms in combination with elements of indeterminacy and a minimalistic approach to material that heightens the relationships between sound and silence, movement and stillness, texture and space.
Jeppe Ernst
With his radically reduced works, Jeppe Ernst (b. 1985) fundamentally questions our traditional ways of thinking about music. By removing all unnecessary layers of a work he seeks to illuminate its most essential idea, often eliminating one or more of the most basic musical parameters in the process – such as, for example, the audible sound.
Allan Gravgaard Madsen
Allan Gravgaard Madsen's (b. 1984) works are “poetically insistant” in their exploration of the tension between standstill and movement. The works consist of a micro world of sounds, sparse textures and limited musical material in which attention are drawn to the physical aspects of the classical instruments.
Martin Stauning
Martin Stauning's (b. 1982) works always have an immediate and sensuous quality that demonstrates his characteristic, lyrical expression. He composes sumptuous soundscapes and small details vibrating so intensely that time and place cease to exist.