Su, 7. Dec 2025
Svaneborg Kardyb
Einlass 19:00 | Beginn 20:00
Porgy & Bess Wien
Riemergasse 11, 1010 Wien
Tickets
Spotify | Youtube | Instagram ”Their sound floats and twinkles like it’s from another place… there’s myth and magic there” – Elizabeth Alker, BBC Radio 3 “Over Tage’s warm embrace is like a thick Nordic knit on a hostile day” ★★★★ – MOJO “Delightfully intimate… find yourself wholly absorbed” – Electronic Sound “Uplifting and thought provoking” ★★★★ – Louder Than War When Nikolaj Svaneborg and Jonas Kardyb first met in Aalborg in Northern Denmark in 2013, they discussed forming a duo together, but they only brought the idea to fruition six years later, further south in the university city of Aarhus. In that first week where they reconnected and started playing together, they seemed to have a telepathic understanding they’d not enjoyed in other groups they’d been in. “We didn't have to say anything,” marvels Jonas, “we could just play, and even though we then sometimes stumbled through, it was still music. That’s where the energy in the project came from: it was such a short hop from just playing, to writing and composing. We like to call it that we compose in the moment. It’s not about playing freely, it’s more about being very attentive to what melody is in there, trying to play very simply, and catch that one idea.” “Because we are only two in the band,” Nikolaj further reasons, “that means there’s only one other person to listen to, and to change direction according to, so we just pay attention to one another, and music seems to come out of nowhere.” Nikolaj Svaneborg says that his gentle, silky style on the keys derives from the Young Chang model he learnt on as a child at home. “Those pianos are so loud and hissy, we used to put a cloth between the hammers and the strings – it was the only way it was possible to play it and still have people in the room. The core of my technique is playing really quietly, so I wouldn’t disturb people with that terribly bright piano.” Nikolaj’s first non-domestic experiences were as an accompanist within the Danish community singing tradition known as Højskole. “It’s not technically a choir, it’s just a tradition where people come together to sing these simple, memorable songs that everybody knows – hymns, political songs, love songs, thematical songs. That’s what I find most interesting in music composition: you have these three chords that everybody’s been playing since the 1600’s, but you can still find a new melody that sparks something original.” Nikolaj was inspired by Jan Johansson’s ‘Jazz På Svenska’ album from 1964, where Swedish folk songs were sparsely reworked for piano and double bass, and he remains plugged into the New Nordic Jazz scene. Jonas Kardyb has a quite different background in music. “I like that stuff Nikolaj’s into,” he says, “but also blues and Americana – Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, The Band. I've played in a lot of guitar bands, and I've always loved good songs. I grew up in Tønder, close to the Southern border, where since the mid-’70s we’ve had Denmark’s biggest folk festival, which brings over Irish and American artists. Often, there are no drums, and at home I found playing along to folk and blues records without drums felt really cool.” Playing with Nikolaj, he says, opened the way to play innovatively, free of genre. “You shouldn't play like a jazz drummer just because you maybe decided you’re a jazz duo,” he says. “We just met up and played, and found you can do what you like, and that made the music flow.” During those long, almost forgotten gruellingly indoors-y pandemic months, the two chanced upon a video of Poland’s Hania Rani performing her song ‘F Major’ on the Icelandic tundra. At the end, they noticed logo branding for Manchester’s Gondwana Records, and there began a classic YouTube rabbit-hole of discovery as they sought out other artists on the label. “Every artist, I liked,” enthuses Nikolaj, “and how everything was kind of jazzy, but not jazz at all, and everyone was doing it differently. It's everything I like about the exploration in jazz.” So, they emailed Gondwana bossman Matthew Halsall, and after a six-month interlude (Halsall had already dug what he’d heard, but his reply went to spam, so he chased them down on Instagram), the two parties were connected. By that point, they’d all but completed their third record, ‘Over Tage’ (= “over the roofs”), with fresh touches of trumpet and guitar; with Gondwana’s help in “shaping it for release”, the album came out in November ’22. From there, with the label’s reach and support, they’ve enjoyed taking their music to the world, touring far and wide. “With instrumental music,” Nikolaj reflects, “there are no words, so there's nothing separating everybody – everybody is on the same page, so we can really connect with people. We have a song called ‘Freudesang’, which means ‘The Whistling Tune’. We play it at every show, and we conduct people into whistling along, and everybody can do it. It's that Højskole vibe, but we found you can do it in Romania, and it’ll be fun. It also worked in Canada, Prague and the UK.” And with Superkilen released in October 24 you get the feeling that many more people around the world will soon discover the charm and quiet intensity at the heart of their music.