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In Memoriam: John Hammond Jr., 1942–2026
John P. Hammond (aka John Hammond Jr.), a blues guitarist and singer who was one of the first white American…
“Music is something to share and I have always felt that you cannot sit and wait for things to happen,” says Amalie Dahl.
(Photo: Cristina Marx)Live At Moldejazz (Sonic Transmissions), the impressive, assured and heady debut album from Danish reedist and composer Amalie Dahl’s 12-member Dafnie EXTENDED, conveys a maturity one might not expect from a 30-year-old. It’s even more difficult to square that her passion for jazz and improvised music didn’t fully take root until she was already in her early 20s.
She grew up surrounded by music: Her parents were members of their local chamber choir and often hosted rehearsals in their home in a tiny village not far from Ringsted. Dahl began to play the saxophone when she was just 7. As a youth she was part of an informal band with older siblings, playing Danish psalms, local folk tunes and the stray jazz standard, but it would take years before she developed an artistic sensibility of her own.
In fact, it wasn’t until she enrolled in Norway’s prestigious Trondheim Conservatory in 2018 that she truly found her path with jazz and improvised music. Dahl has rapidly emerged as one of the most creative and prolific forces in jazz over the last four years, leading multiple bands, prodigiously working as a sideperson, and revealing a broad aesthetic range.
“I always had the feeling that I wanted to do something creative,” she says of her childhood. “I thought about theater or being a writer, but I never thought about music when I was a kid, even though I played the saxophone.”
Dahl never stopped playing music all through school, and she began to form a connection to vintage mainstream jazz like Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt and Cannonball Adderley in her pre-conservatory years in Denmark. In 2015, she enrolled at the Fridhems folkhögskola in Sweden, where music began to overtake her pursuit of biotechnology. But she says things were blown wide open once she arrived in Trondheim.
“Trondheim was the first proper city I lived in,” she says. “The music there has a certain sound, or quality, usually manifested by the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. My interest in free-jazz had just started, so I just went to a lot of concerts, almost every day.” But perhaps the most impactful experience in Trondheim were daily improv sessions she participated in with drummer Emma Lönnestål, whom she met at the Fridhems folkhögskola. “She had played a lot more free improvisation than me, so I was asking, ‘Can we do this? Can you show me how? How is this working?’ It was really a safe space for me, just playing with her inside this tiny, tiny rehearsal room.”
By now the saxophonist was on a tear, immersing herself in the local scene and conducting feverish research. One of her Trondheim teachers was fellow Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, who introduced her to the music of Anthony Braxton and Marion Brown. While the COVID pandemic was a challenge for students, Dahl took her sudden downtime as an opportunity to lead her first band, a quintet she named Dafnie. The group’s eponymous 2022 album captured a much more aggressive attack from Dahl, but even then the quintet was couching its most adventurous improvisations within cogent, multipartite compositions, carefully calibrating each solo to emanate naturally from her writing.
By the time Dafnie recorded its stunning second album Står op Med Solen in 2023, the band had plenty of gigs under its belt and Dahl had a much deeper point of view. All of it was situated within a post-bop landscape more concerned with mood, melody and feeling than jazz orthodoxy. She also released Memories, her first solo saxophone album that deftly captured her rigor and structural savvy as a free improviser.
That practice has evolved through several projects, including a trio with bassist Henrik Sandstad Dalen and drummer Jomar Jeppsson Søvik, and the quartet Building/Breaking Habits, which navigates the line between spontaneity and written material on its searing 2025 eponymous debut album. Yet another side of her work surfaces in Treen, an improvising trio with a razor-sharp focus on timbre and texture through drone-like excursions.
Still, Dahl’s innate curiosity and drive keeps opening up new vistas, including a growing connection with the veteran Swedish pianist Lisa Ullén, who has been playing a new set of music with Dafnie, resulting in a dazzling live album coming in the fall on the Trost label.
Ullén is also part of Dafnie EXTENDED, an endeavor proposed by the Belgian concert presenter Koen Vandenhoudt after the saxophonist had inquired about playing a Dafnie concert with Ullén at the Summer Bummer festival in Antwerp. She enlisted some of her favorite players, including veteran bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. Additionally, Dahl brought in some players she didn’t know, including accordionist Ida Løvli Hidle and the Berlin-based Argentine baritone saxophonist Sofia Salvo.
From the beginning, she took the name of the project literally.
“I mapped out the different qualities or core elements in Dafnie, and added players who could extend those qualities: textures, free-jazz, groove, electronics, chamber jazz. Then I mapped out what kind of parts I wanted in the concert and wrote each part.”
While the music certainly relates to diversity of the quintet, Dahl introduced a new raft of possibilities, whether small percussive details, expanded electronic sallies courtesy of synthesizer player Anna Ueland, or the elastic squeezebox sounds of Hidle. The music seethes with energy and intent, revealing a quiet confidence that has guided Dahl from the beginning.
After a hectic year of touring in 2025, Dahl has been using the early months of 2026 conceiving how she can work more efficiently in the future, but she doesn’t imagine sitting still.
“Music is something to share and I have always felt that you cannot sit and wait for things to happen,” she says. “You have to do something actively if you want to play.” DB
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