Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 02/07/2026 23:44:00

Jazz has largely replaced the organ at Brorsons Kirke, the church on a triangular plot between Rantzausgade and Jesper Brochmands Gade in Copenhagen's Norrebro district. Consecrated at Epiphany 1901 and designed by Thorvald Jorgensen - later the architect of Christiansborg Palace - the church is named after the hymn writer and bishop H.A. Brorson, and was financed by the Copenhagen Church Fund together with a famous "two-ore collection" among Inner Mission supporters that earned it the nickname the Two-Ore Church. Since 1998 the church has served as a children's and youth church within Blaagaardens parish, and its musical profile is unlike almost any other in the Danish national church: organ and traditional choir have given way to a house band and lead singers, with hymns reinterpreted in jazz-inflected arrangements. Resident musicians - bassist and bandleader Esben Eyermann and singer-hymnwriter Janne Mark, whose "Salmer fra broen" grew out of the church's music - have documented the approach in books and albums, and concerts, vinyl evenings and music services fill the calendar alongside yoga, grief groups and family activities. The church wrote itself into modern Danish history in 2009, when some 70 rejected Iraqi asylum seekers took refuge inside; the police clearance that August, met by hundreds of demonstrators, made national headlines and remains a touchstone in Danish debates about church asylum. Today the church presents itself as an experimenting parish church with high ceilings in every sense, open to all regardless of faith or background. The interior holds an altar painting by Poul Steffensen, glass mosaics by Axel Hou and a font by Anders Bundgaard. The triangular site also holds a free-standing bell frame and the vicarage, and inside hangs a copy of Johan Horner's 1756 portrait of Brorson himself. Blaagaardens parish runs two churches - Brorsons and Hellig Kors Kirke a few streets away - giving this corner of Norrebro an unusually dense musical church life.