A crazy spring

We are well into the spring of 2020, but there is no doubt that the development we have been through in the last months was something none of us had foreseen.

My year started with a number of concerts, including with singer Mia Guldhammer. Already in January, we met in my kitchen and jammed together with my friend and playing partner for many years, Finnish Tapani Varis. It was a great pleasure, and on that occasion we recorded a small video with the help of another old friend, cinematographer and editor Jes Paul. You can see it here:

At the beginning of March, as you know, the corona virus struck, and soon all so-called concerts at venues and especially festivals were canceled for the rest of the year. At the same time, I was asked if I wanted to help produce 20 short podcasts about Danish music life during the crisis, they were to be published almost daily for a period, and they were to each contain an interview with people who had an opinion, advice and/or a knowledge that could be of benefit to Danish music life in general. Exceptionally good timing from my point of view!

Marianne Søgaard is a teacher at Silkeborg High School, and she has a lot of knowledge about what group singing can do and why we love to sing together.

Here is a good example of one of the 20 episodes we produced of the podcast series 'Sceneskift'. It consists of an interview with the Danish university teacher, singer and composer/songwriter, Marianne Søgaard. I interviewed her to find out what it is that makes group singing so popular here during the corona crisis. Take a listen!

Now it's May 1st - the strangest we've had in many years - and thus time for me to personally immerse myself a little in composing some new music.

Spring has come to Frederiksberg in Copenhagen, where I live - you'd almost think we were in Japan.

At the same time, Mia Guldhammer and I have to continue with the preparations for the album which we hope to record in the autumn - we have many ideas and new music in the 'making stage'. We've put the turbo on with composing together, and we've also started writing new and re-poeting old lyrics, so there's plenty to tackle.

And we plan for the new album to contain a mix of new and old songs and music, played partly by us as a duo, but also with various guest soloists.

But I'll probably tell more about that here as the plans develop. Until then: Take care of yourself - spring is here, but we still have to keep our distance!