Border Country

Border Country celebrates community across cultures and brings together threads from folk, jazz and electronica for a jingling and visual journey created by Kaspar Vig, Emil de Waal and Gustaf Ljunggren together with electronic artist Band Ane with two completely new to the Danish music scene, namely the Belgian composers and musicians Catherine Graindorge and Teuk Henri.

Catherine Graindorge is known for her expressive playing on both violin and viola and has collaborated with artists such as Nick Cave, Iggy Pop and Mick Harvey. Her music moves in the tension field between the cinematic, the experimental and the deeply emotional. Teuk Henri is a versatile guitarist and composer whose work ranges from avant-garde rock and electro-acoustic landscapes to collaborations with theatre and film. Together they bring a deeply personal and transcendent approach to the project.

The inspiration is drawn from the Danish Folklore Collection's letters, over 100-year-old audio recordings and stories. Through new compositions, accompanied by video material from the Danish Film Institute, the artists delve into a world with the cultural, musical and geographical boundaries of the past, and make them relevant to the present.

The title Border Country expresses the place where the participating artists prefer to be; away from the usual straight musical path and out where the unexpected, the adventure, and exciting things can happen – in the border country of music.

One of the participating musicians, Gustaf Ljunggren, says about the encounter with the past: There is something incredibly alluring and mysterious about the old recordings from the Folklore Collection. There is simply so much material to choose from that it has been necessary for me to narrow down the options quite a bit. My work can be described as follows: I work on a melody that I try to interpret in the way I feel the music now, in my own time. The embedded emotions of the music are the most exciting thing for me, and I try to reproduce a musical signal from the past as inspiration for how I can create music today, and make it relevant to the present.

The programme will consist of newly composed music by the participating artists, adaptations of material from the Folklore Collection, and new interpretations of previously published original music.