Torben Ulrich inspired many people in his long life.
Also Kjartan Arngrim of Folkeklubben.
He explains this in more detail in this interview with All That

Tekst af Mads Kornum
Illustration af Sidse Andersen

From All That..., March 2024

On December 20, 2023, Torben Ulrich died at the age of 95. Most people knew him as a Danish tennis legend with an unorthodox view of the sport and a sometimes provocative behavior in an otherwise regulated sports world.

However, he was so much more than that, which is well described in the books “Jazz, bold & buddhism” (“Jazz, Ball & Buddhism”) (2003) and “Udspil” (“In Play”) (2004).

Via Torben Ulrich's own words – edited by Lars Movin – in these books you get a nuanced picture of a person, a sportsman, an artist and a music enthusiast who had so many facets in his long career.

Here you can read, among other things, that Torben Ulrich, before his time as a tennis star, was a well-written, well-informed and insightful writer, who to this day is regarded by many jazz enthusiasts as one of the most important mediators in the field.

Torben Ulrich started writing about jazz in 1945, just 17 years old. In 1953 he got a weekly column in (the Danish newspaper) Politiken – Jazzmosfæren – which continued until 1960, after which he switched to BT. Here he stayed until the mid-1960s, when the writings were gradually phased out, in parallel with the tennis career becoming increasingly demanding. By then, however, it had already turned into more than 500 jazz columns plus separate contributions to journals such as Tribune, Jazzinformation, Musikrevue and Jazzrevue.

He continued his role as a writer through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s at, among others, Information. In terms of content, gradually with as much emphasis on his unorthodox view of sports as on music and an active interest in Buddhism.

He was also active as a musician and together with the pianist and composer Søren Kjærgaard released in 2010 the very original album Suddenly, Sound: 21 Songlines For Piano, Drainpipe, etc. via ILK. An album the two have since worked on a follow-up to.

All That: Dear childen and famous people often have many names. The rebel, the tennis player, the journalist, the writer, the sportsman, the visual artist, the thinker and the father were some of the most frequently used about Torben Ulrich. Which part of the multi- artist Torben Ulrich was your entry key to what, among other things, ended as the song entitled 'Torben Ulrich' on Folkeklubben's (The Folk Club’s) 2016 album Slå flint?

Kjartan Arngrim: I have spent most of my childhood and youth as an elite tennis and badminton player fearing defeat and hoping for victory. It didn't just deprive me of the joy of life. Even worse, it ruined my game. Far too late and long after the racquets had been smashed and put on the shelf, and only the bittersweet memories of lost matches remained, I became acquainted with Torben Ulrich. When Ulrich went on the court, on the stage, to the keys, he suspended the very idea of victory and defeat and met the crowd with the following mantra: When the ball comes, the ball comes. In other words, a demand to meet life openly and curiously. Like a jazz musician. As a living artist. The meeting with Ulrich happened at the same time as my meeting with music, which became the beginning of my new life without scoreboard and final result. Just the thought of a scoreboard at a venue, a result after a concert, seems ridiculous. In music, you win together. You overcome your audience. And the loser is the one who stood with his phone or just laughed his way through the whole concert. For Torben Ulrich, the perfect stroke is not necessarily a winning stroke, but more to be thought of as an interesting stroke, an exciting action. A move that calls for a reaction. I remember that, while I was reading Lars Movin's book "Udspil" about Torben Ulrich in particular, I walked along The Old King's Road; and then text and melody came almost simultaneously. "Like Torben Ulrich, I go for the perfect shot." I worked a lot with the text to get it finally in place. At one point, I tried to incorporate a complete list of Danish Prime Ministers as part of the text. A really bad idea, but fun to play with. And that's the point; to relate to things playfully.

AT: Torben Ulrich ended his days at the age of 95. He was active and reflective to the end. Which of his many strokes in and for life do you remember him best for, and what overall impression have his many impressions left on you?

KA: I met him twice, no, actually three times. The last time was at the Book Forum, where he stood behind the stage where he was to perform 10 minutes later. With hands wrapped around the large, thick iron wires that hold the Bella Center together, and with all body weight placed behind. He swung from side to side like a monkey in the trees to, as he said, "feel the space". My boy agreed immediately. And so they hung there, a five-year-old and a ninety-year-old, feeling the room together.

The first time was not an actual meeting. It was in 2018 in the bookstore Tranquebar, where he was to appear in conversation with Lars Movin. But I didn't dare go up and introduce myself. A bit of a defeat. In return, I met Thorsten (T.S.) Høeg, and then I got the song ‘Tranquebar’ out of all the misery.

The second time, in the same year, was in connection with our record reception for the album Sort Tulipan, which I left to meet Torben and his sweet wife Molly, with whom I had written all the way back in connection with the song 'Torben Ulrich’ and then a few days before regarding my lack of courage to introduce myself at Tranquebar. Now I cycled through Copenhagen K's streets late in the evening with a copy of the new record that I wanted to give him. I arrived at a little gallery and met a 90-year-old playful, lively and curious person, ready to publish his new book "Boldens øjne, værens ben" in the same week. We talked for 10 minutes, and then I wheeled back to the record reception and could tell the others in the club with fire in my eyes that we were behind: Torben had received our record and returned with a book. The perfect shot.

AT: In a major interview for Politiken in connection with his 90th birthday, he expressed that he missed a rebellion and missed that, in general, a few more questions were easily thrown in the way. Are these thoughts that you can recognize in your approach to writing texts, the one where the recipient would like to be animated for thoughts and questions rather than being served concrete answers?

KA: Yes, I remember the interview, which was very much about the sport, I mean. That it had become boring, predictable, mainstream and sponsored. One could rightfully object that this also applies to the music. If you read the lyrics of a song like the new 'More than a club', are we going in and messing with exactly the same things that Torben addresses in that interview?

AT: Torben Ulrich was impossible to pin down, but at the same time he had some clear attitudes and philosophies. Not least the one that the fun and the beauty of sport are more important than victory and defeat. A philosophy that you at Folkeklubben have adopted, most recently read on the album More than a club. What is it about that philosophy that strikes you, who is otherwise an actor in a music industry that is probably more commercially uncertain and competitive than ever?

KA: A few years ago, I read an interview with the American philosopher Donna Haraway, who, together with Torben Ulrich, has in many ways played into the thoughts behind More than a club. A record that, completely in Ulrich's spirit, overflows with sports metaphors and stories about the many battles that life offers. The wins, the defeats that still sting, and then of course more going forward the massive battles we as civilizations are facing right now: the climate battle, the massive inequality, the battle for the truths on the internet and between democracies and autocracies.

But the record and the song could not have been written without Haraway's book "Staying with the trouble". Or rather, it would have been a fool without it. Because with Haraway's concept of "staying in trouble" it became possible to lift the whole sports and fighting metaphor to a new level. Raised above the scoreboard. To a level where we can actually use it for something. After all, it was up there that Torben Ulrich also wanted with his idea of the perfect shot.

Because – according to Haraway and Ulrich – it's not about winning or losing. It's not about hoping for victory or laughing about or laughing fearing/accepting defeat. It's about "staying in trouble". To look up from the scoreboard and the division of losers and winners – perhaps the most dangerous of all ways of thinking about each other. If we are to meet the challenges and struggles that we are now facing in a progressive way, we must accept and consider other perspectives and ways of thinking. If we can do that, we are more than a club.

AT: In his later years Torben Ulrich worked together with the jazz pianist and composer Søren Kjærgaard with a joint in-depth exploration of the field between sound and words, silence and pulse, space and presence. It resulted in a CD release in 2009, and since then they have reportedly been working on a follow-up. On More than a club you have written the song 'What they call music' yourself – with the lines "What they call music – it reaches where nothing else reaches". I read it as if both you and Ulrich have a belief that music is often more than music, more like a link to a whole, to something bigger. Is it an interpretation that you recognize? And if so, how do you explore self-thesis in your work with music?

KA: Yes, it is as if time passes and the water rises and the earth moves; as if it is beginning to dawn on us all that there must be a level above the present way of approaching the world. And that level is what they call music. That is the ability to together on stage, at work, in the family, on the national team – yes, anywhere, to make it swing. And to imagine the music, the musical approach, as the answer to the challenges of the future; it is outrageously ambitious.

AT: Jazz was a large part of the soundtrack to Torben Ulrich's life, and you yourself refer to names like John Coltrane and T.S. Høeg in some of your lyrics for Folkeklubben. What role has jazz music played for you in this life, and are there any jazz albums that hold particular weight when you have to look at your own soundtrack to life?

KA: I'm late for everything. It wasn't until I was 41 that I discovered jazz and began massively studying Miles Davis and John Coltrane in particular. Especially the Miles Davis record "Someday My Prince Will Come", which we've heard way too much on the tour bus. But it's good. The opening number alone. There's a song on our new record called Coltrane Confusing', which – I imagine – is a form of payoff from the intense listening.

But what makes it real jazz is the only feature of the song and the record. Namely, my bookseller's son, just 15 years old, whom I, at the request of the father and much against my will (but you do your civic duty, I guess), took him on a business internship, when he was "sitting at home and producing some music". We met in the bookstore and I played a few of the new songs on my guitar, and the intern played his urban tracks with lyrics in Danish and French via an iPhone. Three months later he was to deliver the absolute highlight of the new record with his French verses on a track for which he had come up with the title himself. A song that probably just says that in life and jazz it is important to be open, inspired and confused. When the ball comes, the ball comes!