Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) is regarded as Denmark’s leading composer and one of the most important composers in the Nordic countries, with an oeuvre that unites deep folk roots with a highly personal and innovative musical language. His work ranges from symphonies and operas to chamber music, songs, and hymns, many of which remain integral to Danish cultural heritage. Nielsen was known for rejecting jazz music.
The Paper Trio brings together three idiosyncratic and ever-resourceful improvisers – Danish vocal artist Randi Pontoppidan and sax player-flutist Thomas Agergaard with American double bass player Greg Cohen (who plays with Pontoppidan in the Event Horizon duo), who explores the tension between composition and free improvisation, and draws inspiration from jazz, folk traditions and contemporary classical music. The trio began playing together in 2021, and at an early concert at a paper museum in Denmark, the musicians were invited to incorporate the sound of paper into their music. The trio released its debut album Hippo Road (Time Span, 2024).
Light in the Dark offers Paper Trio’s respectful yet irreverent interpretations of the music of Carl Nielsen. Paper Trio is augmented by Polish pianist-organist Artur Tuźnik, bass-baritone vocalist Jakob Bloch Jespersen, and the Danish Akela String Quartet (who won the Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl Nielsen Talent Award in 2023). This ad hoc chamber ensemble interprets Nielsen’s chamber, choral, and orchestral works not as historical, fixed monuments but as a living, timeless legacy, open to improvisation, and as intuitive points of orientation. The melodies remain intact, recognizable, and central, while the surrounding musikal space is allowed to shift, breathe, and respond to the present moment. Pontoppidan and Jespersen address Nielsen directly on the last piece, «Melodrama», as if he is still their current mentor, promising to keep his musical legacy alive.
The arrangements are economical to stress Nielsen’s beautiful, thoughtful compositional ideas and strategies, but these arrangements also highlight the subtle, introspective yet playful, experimental edge that Paper Trio brings to this project, as well as the stimulating tension between Nielsen’s elaborate musical structures and the new ensemble’s freedom. The succinct improvisations frame Nielsen’s music, question it, and occasionally stand quietly beside it.
This project is neither homage nor revisionism, but dialogue across different eras and approaches that introduces a contemporary perspective on Nielsen’s music. Light in the Dark suggests a thought-provoking introduction to Nielsen music, and reflects how Nielsen’s iconic music continues to resonate, inspire, touch, and live in Paper Trio’s organic, sometimes eccentric but deeply inventive musical games and dances.
Eyal Hareuveni
Randi Pontoppidan (vocal, live electronics), Thomas Agergaard (saxophone, flute), Greg Cohen (double bass), Artur Tuźnik (piano, organ), Jakob Bloch Jespersen (bass-baritone), Akela String Quartet: Clara Glasdam (violin), Gustav Ranum (violin), Kirsten Wilbrandt Kjær (viola), Oskar Reuben Friis-Hansen (cello)
