BACH with cellist Henrik Dam Thomsen is DANISH ALBUM OF THE YEAR in Politiken.
Thank you to Thomas Michelsen, and a HUGE congratulations to Henrik Dam Thomsen and producer Mikkel Nymand, as well as to the Beckett Foundation, without whose support this recording would not have been possible.
"The Strongest Danish Performance of the Year:
It was a solo album: classical music for cello recorded by Henrik Dam Thomsen. The principal cellist of the DR Symphony Orchestra has been working to find the perfect interpretation of Bach's six famous cello suites since he was ten years old.
This year, he recorded them and even produced a video in the TikTok-promoted yellow brick cathedral of Grundtvig's Church. However, it is the album itself, the sound of the cello in perfect acoustics, namely the baroque wooden space of Garnisons Church, which is a much better church for the purpose, that truly stands out.
Henrik Dam Thomsen plays the six suites with introspective dreaminess. Expressive and with an extremely elegant sense of how the music can unfold, it seems to both speak and think at the same time.
The album, which I awarded six hearts, is not without Danish competitors. While Dam Thomsen’s release marked his passing of the age of 50, Trio con Brio marked their 25th anniversary as an ensemble with music by Schubert and Weinberg on The Passenger.
But Bach's suites, in a recording that has since been chosen as Editor’s Choice by the esteemed Gramophone magazine and nominated for an International Classical Music Award, must be considered this year’s Danish album of the year".
DANISH MUSIC AWARD JAZZ 2024: BEST COMPOSITION goes to Bakob Buchanan for his work: SONG & WIND
A huge congratulations to Jakob Buchanan for receiving the prestigious award as Jazz Composer of the Year for his work SONG & WIND. Congratulations also go out to the Aarhus Jazz Orchestra, the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir, percussionist Marilyn Mazur, conductor Carsten Seyer-Hansen, and producer Preben Iwan.
Following the international success of his Requiem for Jazz band, choir and orchestra, SONG & WIND is a meditative oratorio on ecological themes. Expressed in searching humanistic tones of characteristic of so much Scandinavian symphonic art-jazz, is a timeless work his time is now.
