Performers & composers

Simon Christensen

Graduated as a composer at the Royal Danish Music Academy where he studied under Hans Abrahamsen, Ivar Frounberg and Niels Rosing Schow. Additional studies at Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris, with Frédéric Durieux.
He has been commissioned by the Danish Radio Concert Orchestra, Athelas Sinfonietta, LIN-Ensemblet, Danish National Symphony orchestra, Alpha and Copenhagen Saxophone Quartet. The music has been performed in Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Rumania, Croatia and South America. Furthermore, he has participated in KUNSTPARADE 2001 and 2006 and has made a recording at Dacapo.

He is an active composer and musician in the composer ensemble Kundi Bombo, with Simon Christensen: Drumpad/Keyboard/Laptop, Eblis Alvarez: Electric guitar/Laptop and Peter Navarro-Alanso: saxophones.
In connection with the State’s Found for the Endowments of the Arts grant given to Simon Christensen in 2003, Svend Hvidtfeldt Nielsen writes:

You could be tempted to split the composers of Simon Christensen’s generation into two groups: The fierce and the lyrical. Of these, Simon Christensen, unconditionally belongs to the first group. His music is impetuous, gesticulating, often at a very loud sound level. Abrupt accentuations blend into ambitious movements in an edgy, rubbing, inescapable advance. If you take a look at the music scores you will discover that they are extremely demanding. Demands that seem impossible to fulfill at first glance, but - when the music is playing - turn out to be evidently necessary for the music Christensen writes. Because, when it succeeds, it is spontaneous catching music that behind its often hard appearance reveals a poetry of its own, and after hearing it several times you will even discover a kind of lyricism inside it. Simon Christensen accentuates the limited validity of the initial split into two groups. It is artificial. Lyricism is, Christensen shows us, briefly and to the point, “an obvious great compositional talent, from whom we can expect excellence!”

The Sax’s Track 1 & 2 (6')

Premiered 11. september 2005, Stavnsholt Kirken-Farum, Denmark.