Background and Musical Mindset:
“You use or take from history what you need.”
- Morton Feldman quoting T. S. Eliot in a 1967 interview
At 20 I enrolled at the Royal Conservatory in Holland, and graduated in jazz guitar from there in 2004. From 2004 and onward I have been based in Copenhagen. While jazz is deep in my musical roots, I have always been listening to and studying all kinds of musics from all times and parts of the world, and it has never been a possibility for me to limit myself to work within one genre of music. I don’t think about genre when I think about music, I only think about whether or not it’s interesting and touching to me. Improvisation and intuition are corner stones of my musicality.
Related Work:
I'd like to mention a few musical projects that materialized parallel to the 2 years of artistic research at the RMC, since I feel that they will provide a clearer sense of my musical scope and context.
Anders Holst - Spirituum Terrae
In March 2020, in fact the very day that Denmark went into it's first lockdown because of the Covid-19 virus, my album Spirituum Terrae was released on the American label Scissor Tail Records. It's an album solely featuring compositions for acoustic guitar, with very little improvisation. It's also a celebration of Earth, our home and mother.
Bog Bodies
I'm part of the collaborative band Bog Bodies, along with drummer Séan Carpio and Robert Stillman. Our second album was supposed to be released on the UK label MIR in June 2020, but because of Covid-19 it will be released in July 2021 instead. To fill the void of the postponed release, we recorded a new track. I recorded a foundation on strings, sent it on to Robert who recorded a beautiful reed arrangement, and then sent it on to Séan who recorded percussion parts.
Cirklen - Genklang
Cirklen is an ensemble for 6 guitars that have existed since 2009. Until recently we exclusively played through-composed energetic danceable music on loud electric guitars with no effects. But in 2020 we premiered a new piece, Genklang, which is composed by fellow composer Niels Bjerg and myself, and is a choreographed work for 6 acoustic guitars and choir. An acoustic guitar is a relatively low volume instrument in a big church, and so moving the sound around the place by having the guitarplayers and choir singers move physically is a very effective and intersting way to explore the acoustics of the space, and give the audience a unique listening experience. Genklang was premiered on September 1st 2020 in Vestervig Church, Denmark.
Trestle Records - One Day Band
In late 2019 I played a concert at the London Jazz Festival, at Union Chapel, with my good friend and collegue Robert Stillman. The day after I was invited to participate in a One Day Band recording, an album series by the UK label Trestle Records. I was to make an album in one day, with three other artists whom I hadn't met before. The album was released on January 1st, 2021.
Trestle Records - From Isolation
Shortly after the Covid-19 virus locked down the world, I was again approached by Trestle Records to participate in their EP series From Isolation. I and two other artists whom I hadn't worked with previously made an EP with new music, which ended up being created in a similar way to the method i call the Tape Diary as described in the part of this exposition called Working Methods. The EP was released on April 17th, 2020.
Tompkins Square - Imaginational Anthem X
Following the release of my solo album for acoustic guitar as mentioned above, I was asked by the American label Tompkins Square to contribute an original composition for solo acoustic guitar to their forthcoming album Imaginational Anthem X, which is a celebration of the travels of guitar music forth and back between Europe and the USA over the past centuries. The album was released on June 5th, 2020.
