Salt Peanuts (NO)
JAKOB BUCHANAN
«Mols: The Mols Booklet of Melodies»
OUR RECORDINGS, OUR-LP006/OUR-LP007

Danish flugelhorn player and composer Jakob Buchanan was born in Viby, Jutland (Jylland). He was the first jazz student ever to be accepted into the soloist class of the Royal Academy of Music Aarhus, where he later taught for many years. In 2020, Buchanan and his wife Nanna relocated to the peaceful Mols in the southern part of Djursland, Jutland, where they settled in a new home, «nestled in the heart of a Nature Symphony unfolding across open lands».

This new home was originally built by a local farmer, amateur musician and ethnomusicologist named Martin Madsen, steeped in the musical legacy of Martin’s father, the legendary and colourful local fiddler Peter Madsen (1865–1900), who had a penchant for the dreamy and the anarchistic, and composed numerous dance songs. Buchanan began to unearth the original music from that era and found a collection of handwritten transcriptions of all Madsen’s songs derived from his notebooks.

Buchanan was inspired to compose a suite dedicated to the landscapes and the local folk music of Mols, weaving the old dance songs and hymns into a folk-like tapestry of the past and the present. He wanted these songs and hymns to echo melodies from afar, «carried over the distant hills – songs in the wind, resonating with the spirit of bygone times». The music of Mols: The Mols Booklet of Melodies was created in Buchanan’s circus wagon in Mols, near The Yellow Cottage House that the farmer and fiddler Martin Madsen had built around 1904, while he was playing the flugelhorn and watching the nearby landscapes.
The music was composed for a jazz quartet – Buchanan on flugelhorn, American Chris Speed on tenor sax and clarinet, Danish pianist Simon Toldam (both Speed and Toldam played on Buchanan’s previous projects), and Swedish double bass master Anders Jormin – and for a string quartet – the Aarhus-based string quartet, The Artos Quartet. The music was recorded live in the symphony hall at Musikhuset Aarhus. The album is accompanied by text and images by Mols-based, young Danish writer Rasmus Theisen, author of the modern folk-horror novel Molbohistorier (2023), and photographer Per Bergmann.

Buchanan interpreted four playful melodies of Madsen and moulded them into his own contemplative, often melancholic chamber jazz music. He found resonances with local names and locations of something fairy-tale-like and Tolkien-esque. The beautiful, openly emotional yet thoughtful suite suggests timeless, evocative, poetic cinematic images, as if Buchanan invites the listener to a dream-like, pastoral journey within the rich, still very much vivid landscapes of Mols. The old folk music of Peter Madsen enriches Buchanan’s lyrical and imaginative sonic vision with humble, insightful reflections about history, community, and the inspiring role of music in our lives. The performance of all the musicians is elegant, faithfully capturing the peaceful, unhurried atmosphere of Mols. Hopefully, the quiet scenery of Mols will inspire Buchanan to compose more touching, beautiful music like The Mols Booklet of Melodies.
Eyal Hareuveni, 26. juli 2026 Av Jan Granlie
Jakob Buchanan (flugelhorn), Anders Jormin (double bass), Chris Speed (tenor saxophone, clarinet), Simon Toldam (piano), The Artos Quartet: Tue Lautrup (violin), Sarah Lucy Foldager (violin), Sanna Ripatti (viola), Brian Friisholm (cello)
https://salt-peanuts.eu/record/jakob-buchanan/