Cecilie Strange Comes Full Circle

News, From the Magazine, Cecilie Strange

By Cree McCree I Oct. 3, 2023

*Beyond* (April Records) continues Strange’s musical journey with meditations on the circle of life.
(Photo: Byssan Lull)

Cecilie Strange, the gifted young Danish saxophonist and composer, first hit DownBeat’s radar with Blue (April Records), her 2020 debut as leader of her “dream quartet,” which set listeners adrift on a tonal soundscape both melancholic and warm. Then came the shimmering music of 2021’s Blikan (Blue), an old Icelandic word that means to shine or to appear. This year’s release of Beyond (April Records) continues her journey with meditations on the circle of life written on a remote Norwegian island under the midnight sun.

Simultaneously, Strange has blossomed as the co-leader of KELIIDO with guitarist Anna Roemer, who shares her vision of ambient improvised music. Elements (ExoPac), their hauntingly beautiful second album, won the 2023 Carl Prize for Jazz Composition, and they have a new release coming out this fall. Both live in Copenhagen’s bohemian enclave of Vesterbro, where Strange and her husband, Viktor Guldagger, an orthopedist, are raising their growing family.

When DownBeat caught up via Zoom, Strange had just returned from a five-week family vacation in Bali. The conversation was enlivened by some delightful pop-in visits by her 3-year-old daughter, Alice.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Cree McCree: “The Alices Of My Life,” the lovely opener of Beyond, sets the tone for an album that traces the circle of life.

Cecilie Strange: That’s the musical journey I’m on. I named my daughter Alice after my late grandmother, who was really important to me and died when I was a child, and it ends with a tribute to my grandfather, who’s 95 and still plays golf. And I was carrying my third child when I went to this little island in the northern part of Norway, where I composed all the music.

McCree: Your meditation on that experience, “Midnight Sun Upon Saltværsøya Island,” is very evocative. You can almost see the shimmer of light dancing on the sea around you.

Strange: Going there was a huge experience for me. You can apply to go compose on this island, and I was lucky to get that opportunity. It’s remote. I needed to take three planes, one ferry and a boat to get there. I was six months pregnant when I went, and there was just one other person living there, the caretaker. But I felt like I needed to go and experience this place, that all this music was about to come out of me.

McCree: The lullaby “Byssan Lull” traces another circle of life. You learned it from your husband, whose mother sang it to him.

Strange: He taught me that lullaby when I was carrying our first child, and I was like, this is beautiful. I got my mother-in-law to write down the lyrics so I could learn to sing it.

McCree: You also dedicated “Where My Heart Lives” to your husband. You two have a powerful bond.

Strange: We really do. We’ve been together for half my life, we have three children together, and he gives me the most amazing support as a musician, an artist and a composer.

McCree: You’ve also come full circle with your “dream quartet” with pianist Peter Rosendale, drummer Jacob Heyer and bassist Thommy Andersson, who played on Blue, Blikan and Beyond.

Strange: Yes, in one room, instead of isolating the sound in separate rooms. Josefine Cronhol, our guest vocalist, was also in the circle for Beyond, which was amazing. She used to play with Miles, and I remember hearing her for the first time when I was 17. I had this dream that maybe one day I could do some recording with her.

McCree: Another dream that came true is winning the 2023 Carl Prize for Jazz Composition for your visionary improvisations with guitarist Anna Roemer in KELIIDO.

Strange: The prize is named after the Danish composer Carl Nielson, and it’s a huge honor. We play free improvised music so at first we were like, can we even be nominated for this? But there’s something called instant composing, you compose while you play it.

McCree: You and Anna are completely in sync. How did you first get together?

Strange: We went to the same music academy. I was five years ahead of her, but we had an immediate musical understanding, so when I had my big masters composition concert I invited her to play on it. Then we moved to Norway for a few years, and when I got back Anna asked me to play in her masters concert.

So, when we both found ourselves living in Copenhagen at the same time, we decided we wanted to make a project that was free improvised music. We invite new guest musicians to every concert, and every recording session, so that the music is never predictable. Every time we play, it is 100% improvised. It’s like painting with sound. DB