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CMU Approved
Approved: Our Broken Garden
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 1 June 2011
Hey, so I’m back from SPOT Festival in Århus, Denmark, where I saw many brilliant new acts. You can expect to find a number of them here in the Approved slot over the coming weeks.
First up, Our Broken Garden, who aren’t quite so new, but opened the festival with an amazing show that lifted them even further up my estimations. The band is a project led by singer and pianist Anna Brønsted, formerly a member of Efterklang’s live band, and the show was put together in collaboration with composer Gustaf Ljunggren.
Staged in the city’s cathedral, the Århus Domkirke, the performers – a choir, guitar, viola and cello, bass clarinet, and harp – were spread on raised stages amongst the audience along the aisle, with Brønsted at the front calling down to them, mixing in a few of Ljunggren’s compositions with OBG songs such as ‘Seven Wild Horses’.
The cathedral itself is a grand, bright building with whitewashed walls inside and the sound of the music echoed around it as it was played. It was a show completely designed just for that space and that time – at this point, there are no plans to perform that show ever again, making it a real one-off. No audio or video recording could ever capture what it was like to be sat in that church with music reverberating around you from all sides. At times it was a little overwhelming, but so beautiful and I’m so glad I was able to see it.
