Kit Downes & Calum Builder: Organ duo (UK/AU)

A New Perspective on the Organ Sound of 2025

Acclaimed British pianist, organist, and composer Kit Downes and Australian saxophonist and composer Calum Builder present music for two pipe organs. Combining Builder's custom-built (re)constructed pipe organ - made from recycled organ pipes from churches across Denmark - with Downes on the cathedral organ, they explore the church space with evocative music that combines vibrant tones and shifting melodies as the small homemade organ moves in and out of the sound of the traditional church organ.

Kit Downes is a BBC Jazz Award-winning and Mercury Music Award-nominated artist for ECM Records. He has toured the world on piano, church organ, and harmonium with his own bands (ENEMY, Troyka and Elt) and with artists such as Squarepusher, Bill Frisell, Empirical, Andrew Cyrille, Sofia Jernberg, Benny Greb, Mica Levi, and Sam Amidon.

Calum Builder's music revolves around contemplation, cycles, and spatial sound. It moves between serene silence and a zealous, almost ritualistic intensity - and has been described as "a beautiful and overwhelming experience".

 Approaching the pipe organ as a modular synthesizer, Builder has disassembled and reassembled the instrument to create the (Re)constructed Pipe Organ - made from pipes salvaged from abandoned churches across Denmark. Since 2023, he has performed with the instrument at Brønshøj Water Tower and Marble Church (Copenhagen), Grand Hospice (Brussels), Ballhaus Ost (Berlin), Marmorkirken (Copenhagen), and a number of venues in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Czech Republic, and Slovakia.

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The concert is part of the concert series "New Horizons" during the Aarhus Jazz Festival, where new jazz music is presented in special venues. 

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