23/07/2025
6 stars from JazzJournal -⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
"Simply superb, from first note to last." – Michael Tucker, Jazz Journal
We’re proud to share this glowing review of In the Middle of Nothing, the latest achievement from pianist and composer Carsten Dahl, and a heartfelt tribute to the legendary P***e Mikkelborg.
Featuring an extraordinary ensemble including Fredrik Lundin, Helen Davies, Stefan Pasborg, Mads Kjøller Henningsen, Nils Bo Davidsen, Thomas Vang, a string quartet, and the BBC Children’s Choir, this 38-minute suite is described as “mesmeric, meditative and often elegiac,” placing it in the company of Arvo Pärt, Jan Garbarek, and Terje Rypdal.
Available now: https://orcd.co/in-the-middle-of-nothing
Truely thankful for this review of my latest release - a tribute to maestro and beloved P***e Mikkelborg🙏
JAZZ JOURNAL
☆☆☆☆☆☆ ( 6 stars )
Carsten Dahl Ensemble: In The Middle Of Nothing – To P***e Mikkelborg (Storyville 1014344)
Michael Tucker, JazzJournal, July 8.
The last few years have witnessed a striking range of diversely conceived and realised, but always questing and top-quality releases from Danish pianist and composer Dahl: witness his Mirrors
Within, Sagn, Our Songs, A Beautiful Blue Moment, The Solo Songs Of Keith Jarrett and, until now, the most recent Interpretations, all of which I’ve been fortunate enough to review for JJ.
Dedicated to his compatriot, long-time musical colleague and close friend P***e Mikkelborg – who appears here on breathy, economically cast yet deeply affecting trumpet and flugelhorn – In The Middle Of Nothing is surely Dahl’s most radical achievement to date.
It features Mikkelborg – the maestro who gave us such long-classic albums as the Miles Davis tribute Aura (on which Miles played), Anything But Grey and Song . . . . Tread Lightly – in the stilled and subtly
shimmering, hovering and gently pitch-gliding company of an 18-piece ensemble.
The personnel includes Fredrik Lundin (ts), Helen Davies (harp), Thomas Vang (b), Nils Bo Davidsen (clo, b), Stefan Pasborg (pc), a string quartet and The BBC Children’s Choir, as well as Mads Kjøller Henningsen on
hurdy-gurdy. Dahl himself plays piano, Rhodes, harmonium, guitars and bass.
Such a range of resource might conjure fears of an all-too-rich and indigestible brew, but nothing could be further from the truth. The seven movements which constitute Dahl’s 38-minute mosaic-like suite are chiefly delivered with the sort of delicacy of incisive yet “open” utterance which takes the music into spacious realms as rarified (yet nourishing) as they are rare in jazz.
True, in part 3, Fornax, Lundin’s tenor conjures some brief, thematically appropriate heat, but overall, this is music of practically mesmeric, meditative and often elegaic nature. Spiritual cousin to such exceptional genre-crossing releases of recent decades as Arvo Pärt’s Tabula
Rasa, Terje Rypdal’s Undisonus and Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble’s Officium.
In The MiddleOf Nothing is simply superb, from first note to last.
