Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory finds common ground between Ella Fitzgerald and Charli xcx – and its free-thinking alumni are thriving. We go on a tour to see what’s in the water there (aside from shipwrecks)
Before she was getting DMs from Dua Lipa and minting K-pop hits, and long before yesterday’s surprise release of her sumptuous fourth album, Erika de Casier was a nervous student in her 20s debating what to wear on her first day.
It was 2019, her debut album Essentials had come out that year and received critical acclaim. But at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC), that was by the by. “In Denmark, it’s incorporated in our way of being: everybody is so humble,” says the Portuguese musician. “It wasn’t like I went to school and people were like …” She makes an exaggerated starstruck face. “That would be crazy. It was just, ‘Oh, congrats. I heard the new album. Sounds great.’”
