Danish composer-improviser-sound artist Christian Rønn solo piano album «Navn» (name in Danish) was created for the most part during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. Rønn stresses furthermore this notion of dire times with his own abstract poems – all written in Danish, all are written on the cover of the «Navn», and all are meant to offer another perspective to the listening experience. Obviously, these poems can be read or experienced without listening to the music, and the music can be listened without associating it with the poems.

Rønn adds that any attempt to name objects, abstract concepts, or in this case, musical pieces, is a way of creating space for them in our world, it is always a re-creation, a creation of a mental image that may help us understand ourselves and our existence. Therefore, Rønn’s music for «Navn» exists on its own and exists in a slightly different mental image when it was given names and even longer poems associated with its names. «I did not create this music, or these poems, it’s just the easiest explanation», he concludes.

Rønn’s first two compositions, «Agenda» and «Rite» are contemplative in spirit, flow – literally – like ripples, in a patient manner and sketch abstract, cryptic textures that employ the full resonant qualities of the acoustic piano. But the following compositions – «Den Kolde Skinne», «Tydeligt», «For Meget For Kidt» and «Kvalt I Spænding», highlight Rønn’s qualities as an imaginative and irreverent free-improviser that manages to correspond with the expressive lyricism of Keith Jarret and the uncompromising, free jazz school of Cecil Taylor, but always injecting his own cryptic, poetic voice.

Eyal Hareuveni

Christian Rønn (p)