Musician, composer, educator and facilitator

Music brings us in touch with our feelings and closer together as human beings. It is, for me, the most meaningful activity, I can occupy myself with – and what I have been pursuing for more than 40 years.

In addition to composing and playing music, I am concerned with how to use music in a wider perspective in a more mindful way. And how creativity and creation processes spring from the present moment and best are facilitated.

I have published 12 albums with my  compositions, two of which were DMA jazz-nominated in 2013 0g 2014. Music has taken me to more than 20 countries, and I have composed for ensembles, TV series, documentaries, and commercials, and since 2011 I have been the musical director for the legendary Danish singer-songwriter and film director Søren Kragh-Jacobsen.

As a longtime teacher at the Danish music conservatories and with two academic degrees under my belt I have extensive knowledge and interest in learning, pedagogy, didactics and communication.

Additionally, I have in the last few years begun to write academic articles on creativity and learning for international journals, making presentations that mirror musically creative skills into broader contexts, and, not the least, have started writing a book of interviews with highly accomplished artists in various fields about the space of creativity.

Søren Gemmer (b. 1984)
Pianist and composer working as a band leader as well as a sideman. A healthy appetite for different musical expressions has led to work in modern and mainstream jazz, in free improvisation and in indie music as a synth/Wurlitzer player. The debut album AT FIRST (ILK) was released in 2013 and received widespread critical acclaim for its blend of modern jazz and a love and awe of late romantic and 20th century classical piano music. The upcoming release THE LARK (WhyPlayJazz RS028) presents an elaboration of the trademark melodicism displayed on the debut.

Bio
Born and raised near Aalborg in the Northern part of Denmark, Søren Gemmer by no means took to music early on. Being an avid personal computer enthusiast (when those where just getting personal) and an avid reader from an early age, Søren engaged in musical activity from a visual perspective, conceptualizing about music rather than paying any sort of attention by ear. Not until being caught by the allure of the rock drummer fantasy in local bands did the true emotional potential of music present itself to him. It is this duality of cognition and emotion, complexity and simplicity so to speak, and the challenge of balancing them that eventually drew Gemmer to become a musician. 

Since 2009 he has been living in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is currently completing his Advanced Postgraduate Diploma specializing in adapting stylistical elements from 20th century composers Messiaen and Ligeti into modern jazz composition and improvisation. 

Collaborations and sideman appearences include live work with film maker, poet and national icon, Jørgen Leth, a raft of Danish jazz's 'Who's Who', Gilad Hekselman, Palle Mikkelborg, Thomas Agergaard and a couple of utterly coincidental, yet successful, appearences with the Danish Radio Big Band. He has studied with jazz pianists Jacob Christoffersen, Nikolaj Hess, and Anders Persson, improvisers Torben Snekkestad and Kresten Osgood, as well as renowned classical pianist and educator Anne Marie Fog.

Anders Nilou is following