When Roskilde Cathedral opens its night church on 9 April, the programme is power metal rather than hymns. Organist Asbjørn Dalbjerg plays a piece on the cathedral’s 500-year-old Raphaëlis organ that fuses classical music with tracks by bands such as Hammerfall and DragonForce. The riffs were written for electric guitar, but, he says, they sit surprisingly well on the centuries-old baroque instrument.
The night is tied to Roskilde’s power metal festival Epic Fest, and it is no free-for-all: every track was vetted by parish priest Danielle Schilling to make sure nothing clashes with the church’s religious foundation. A heritage institution borrows a loud subculture’s codes to draw a new crowd through its doors — on its own terms.
So…:
Which audience could you invite in by speaking their language without losing your own?
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