Morten
Alfred
Høirup
December 22, 2019
by Morten Alfred Høirup
2019 has actually been a wild year, I can see now that we are approaching the turn of the year. But it has also been rewarding. Here are some of the highlights as seen through my eyes:
The past year has featured several tours in the USA, Canada, Germany and Denmark with various Danish and international bands.
It has been exciting and, as always, deeply meaningful to meet and play with – and not least for – very different people who have in common that they have a close relationship with (Danish) folk music.
And then, together with good colleagues, I have received two important awards for us, namely a DMA Folk/World Award in the category 'Communication', and an OOaward in the category 'Access'. Both on behalf of the online platform RadioFolk.dk, and both on the grounds that we hold the tab high and provide public service where other media fail, and do not give the genre the attention it deserves. And it is completely deliberate on our part. We cannot and will not accept that you ignore all the many Danes who have a close relationship with this part of Danish culture.
In this connection, I am proud that in 2019 – with support from e.g. Rosa, Tempi, Statens Kunstfond, DJBFA and Mediehaven – have produced and delivered 12 episodes of the podcast The cat in the sack, eight episodes of the podcast People Live and two episodes of the podcast Gamers' Secrets to RadioFolk.dk, as well as a 20 min. long feature about the Danish folk music scene for The Music Planet on BBC Radio3. More episodes and podcasts are on the way, we guarantee that.
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Together with the American violinist Ruthie Dornfeld, with whom I have played since 1985, I participated in the German Windros Folk Festival. Here we played in the festival band put together for the occasion, together with good forces from England, Germany and the USA.
Finally, 2019 was also the year Mia Guldhammer and I started our duo Mia Guldhammer & Morten Alfred Høirup.
We played, among other things at Musik over Præstø Fjord, Aarhus Folk Festival, Huset i Hasserisgade (Aalborg), Musikhuset Aarhus, Die Alte Synagoge (Hagenow, Germany) and in Neues Teater (Emden, Germany).
It has been a shared pleasure, and super exciting to work on building up a repertoire of Danish songs and melodies together with Mia. And it continues in the new year (See the calendar on this page).
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On the way home from a 3-week summer tour in the US and Canada, my hand-built William Laskin guitar went missing in some airport. Man, was I happy when I got it back after a week
In 2020 there are concrete plans for many more concerts and for a debut album with Mia Guldhammer, and hopefully it will also be concerts and more recordings with newly composed music with Ruthie Dornfeld.
In addition, we are working on additional podcasts about the Danish folk music scene under the auspices of RadioFolk.dk - i.a. we have a distinguished anniversary when in June we publish episode no. 75 of Katten i Sækken - a podcast focusing on the Danish folk music scene right now.
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Mia Guldhammer & Morten Alfred Høirup, official press photo taken by Jes Paul in my sister's kitchen on Funen in 2019.
And then of course there are a lot of exciting things in the pipeline that I can't talk about yet, but more on that later.
Now I would like to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and a fantastic 2020. We will hear from you 🙂