Danish percussion artist Henrik Knarborg Larsen has performed as a soloist and chamber musician all over Scandinavia, Europe, USA and Asia. He is Head of Percussion at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, where he has re-build the percussion education, based on modern principles that encompass interpretation theory, practice strategy and body and mind awareness inspired by the Japanese martial art Ki-Aikido. He has taught students about his principles at masterclasses around the world, including famous institutions such as Juilliard School, Sibelius Academy in Finland and Amsterdam Conservatory.
In 2007, he premiered the solo show Les sons de l’art in Paris, a combined theatre and contemporary music performance. In 2014, he obtained the position as a percussionist at Århus Sinfonietta, the oldest and most prestigious contemporary music ensemble in Denmark. In 2015, Larsen introduced a new approach to performance videos; he published an artistic research article about Simon Steen-Andersen’s Split Point written for him, and he played this work solo at the prestigious opening concert of PASIC (the world’s largest percussion festival) in 2016.
From 2017 to 2019, he received support from the Danish Arts Council for a large-scale artistic research project. It encompassed research on his Ki-Aikido methods and special video recordings of selected masterpieces in percussion literature.
“My wish is to make music a larger part of society and help people to start being more creative and listening in their life. My old teacher in Freiburg Bernhard Wulff said that if we could make society work like a good chamber music group we would all be happier.”
Larsen is constantly seeking out exceptional musicians to collaborate with and further develop his style which he has created and played with a variety of groups both internationally and in Denmark.