August 16th at El Mundo Aalborg - tickets

August 17th at Fejø Kirke - tickets

★★★★★☆ - Ivan Rod - Gaffa.dk

★★★★★☆ - Fredrik Lundin - Nordjyske

★★★★★☆ - Andreo Mielczarek - Kristeligt Dagblad

★★★★☆ - Mike Gates - UKvibe.org

New nordic music based on global roots & traditions.

Award-winning and internationally recognized musician Kenneth Dahl Knudsen takes ancient music traditions on new journeys with an international and virtuoso six-person ensemble, connecting the worlds of classical, jazz and roots music.

Press text

Whether he is in a smoky cellar in Morocco, a hut on the Greenland ice sheet or a jazz club in Tokyo, Kenneth Dahl Knudsen has a personal and artistic mission to create the music of the future in a reflection of human traditions and cultures. From his base in Northern Denmark, he brings ancient musical traditions and their contemporary mediators into play - with the composer's thoroughness, the jazz musician's ferocity and the anthropologist's endless curiosity.

With his new sextet, Knudsen has allied himself with a number of fantastic musicians rooted in different traditions. The oud virtuoso Wassim Mukdad is rounded by classical Syrian music, while duduk player Ertan Tekin is a compelling conveyor of traditional Armenian and Kurdish music and culture. Israeli jazz pianist Eyal Lovett has a penchant for Bach's fugues and manages to build architectural soundscapes of Jerusalem's bustling, chaotically scented streets with his playing. Further north we find Ukrainian folk singer Ganna Gryniva, who draws Eastern European folklore into a modern electronic universe with particular ferocity. The ensemble is completed by Spanish and Polish viola player Sebastian Pezsko - a versatile musician skilled in both jazz manouche and classical music.

The music for ATLAS has been newly composed in dialogue with the musicians of the ensemble - with the aim of both allowing the rich musical traditions to be expressed and at the same time challenging the boundaries of tradition and creating new directions in the borderland between modern and ancient, Middle Eastern and European, composed and improvised.

You can expect a concert that explores, with soul and nerve, both the traditional roots of music, the precision of compositional music and the experimental and improvisational detours of jazz. Either way, the stage is set for a beautiful, wild, poetic and wistful experience.