Mikael is a musician and award-winning composer based in Copenhagen, Denmark, who primarily works under the moniker Kloster (the Danish word for monastery) which is simultaneously a solo project, a band, and an ever-growing collective numbering more than 50 people. This eclectic collective has created a collage of ideas as people pass through with their own offerings. The songs circle around spiritual matters and tend to focus on vocal melodies wrapped in beautiful chords and tones.
Mikael has released six critically acclaimed albums. The latest, Half Dream, Half Epiphany, was nominated for album of the year at the Danish Music Awards.
At the Steppeulven 2016 event (an annual music award show curated by the Association of Danish Music Critics) Mikael won the award for composer of the year.
He has performed in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, England, The Faroe Islands, Germany, and USA.
Aside from his work as part of the Nine Beats Collective, Mikael is writing songs for a new national song book in Denmark and working with a Danish theatre company on a performance to premiere in the spring of 2017.
————————————————- The 9 Beats Collective has come together to make a soundscape of songs, instrumentals and spoken word that explores the ancient wisdom known as the Beatitudes. These words speak about another world being possible, another way of being human: in these turbulent times, could they actually offer us steps to a new reality? The 9 Beats Collective explores these powerful notions – and presents them back to the culture around us through music and art.
“The arts and theology and spiritual formation are really great conversation partners because…we’re invited to question the assumptions of the systems that we are part of…They point out that the emperor has no clothes on and then invoke the possibility of newness to come…There’s a longing inside of us for another world, something better than what’s here right now…The Beatitudes invite us into that possibility and say there is a new way to be human, another world is possible.” [Mark Scandrette, author and speaker]