Just before Christmas, Art Music Denmark announced that, in collaboration with the New Yorker composer collective Bang on a Can, we once again had the opportunity to offer a Danish composer or musician a three-week residency at Bang on a Can’s summer festival. Bang on a Can’s jury has been responsible for the selection and out of the Danish applications, the jury has selected Ruben Høgh as this year’s Danish resident.

Ruben Høgh (b. 1996) trained as a pianist at the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music (2016-23) with Amalie Malling and Marianna Shirinyan, incl. a study stay at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf with Paolo Giacometti and private studies with Laurent Boullet in Berlin. Over the years, an increasing interest in new music arose, finally resulting in him studying at the Manhattan School of Music’s “Contemporary Performance Program” in New York from the summer of 2023.

We’ve asked Ruben Høgh about his expectations for this year’s Bang on a Can: 

“I became acquainted with Bang on a Can at the Pulsar Festival in March 2020, when their ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars performed as soloists with The DR Symphony orchestra in the work “Flower Power” by Julia Wolfe – a few days before Denmark’s first national corona shutdown! The concert made a big impression on me, and when I later found out that there was a festival in their name, I knew that it was something I had to investigate further. I have long had an equal fascination with the formal and informal aesthetic settings of a classical concert and a rock concert, respectively, but at the same time did not feel that they could fulfil the full potential of a concert experience. Experiencing an environment that innovatively combines these elements without fundamentally compromising the aesthetic potential of each scene is particularly appealing to me and a direction I want to explore. This is also what brought me to my studies in New York in the first place, and I’m looking forward to deepening this exploration further through the immersive experience of this year’s Bang on a Can Festival!” – Ruben Høgh

Listen to Rubens’s performance of Julia Wolfe’s piece “Compassion” here.