Some dream of discovering life in distant solar systems. Others – like Knud Viktor, Jacob Kirkegaard and now also Simon Toldam – turn the telescope around and uncover unknown life in the immediate yet hidden nature surrounding us. So what did Toldam, the 46-year-old pianist from the experimental jazz milieu, find last night when he turned his gaze toward English photographer Levon Biss’s ultra-close images of beetles, flies and grasshoppers in the world premiere of the hour-long audiovisual trio work Insecta?

First and foremost, he found a varied and inquisitive interpretation of insect life. Behind a transparent screen, Toldam transformed his prepared grand piano into a kind of gamelan instrument, while on either side of him sounds crept and hissed from saxophonist Torben Snekkestad and percussionist Peter Bruun. The production values were high, and the trio – collectively known as Loupe – moved deftly between the concrete and the spherical.

At times, however, there was something old-fashioned about the expression. As a yellow-brown grasshopper gradually took shape on the screen, nanometre by nanometre, the piano’s metallic cymbal-sounds placed it within an Eastern sonic realm. It resonated with exoticism, with old electronic EMS recordings steeped in atonal serialism, and soon Snekkestad let a plaintive Miles Davis-like trumpet drift through the soundscape.

Yet when, with dramatic flair, he blew air through the same instrument or attached a rubber hose and transformed it into a frothing bass monster – while Bruun stroked metal surfaces or pounded the drums in ritualistic patterns – we were out of the past again. And when Insecta finally leaned into the ambient, and Toldam began bending the gamelan tones with his hands inside the open piano, it was as if not only time but also the distance between oneself and the insects dissolved into a trembling dream image. At that point, it suddenly no longer mattered whether there is life on Mars.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek