00:03
Christian Winther
I picked P.S. Krøyer's Seascape. Skagen, 1882.

00:08
Christian Winther
The water has always been a big inspiration to me. It connects us like great art and music. And growing up surrounded by water, I can hear the sounds, I can almost sense the smell, and it feels familiar and it feels like home.

00:20
Christian Winther
It's in many ways similar to great jazz, I think. He wants to share that specific moment in time, that pure and honest expression. And I believe that is what we as artists want to achieve.

00:31
Christian Winther
I feel the same kind of intensity in many of Krøyer's pieces when listening to my favorite jazz musicians. There's a certain honesty of expression. It jumps out at you, what he wants to say. And jazz musicians, we live for those moments, too, and I feel that's similar in a lot of ways to his work.

00:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today our guest is Christian Winther, a Danish saxophonist and composer. Welcome Christian.

01:20
Christian Winther
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.

01:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's a pleasure having you. You and I spent a few hours together a few weeks ago in New Orleans, but today we are separated. We are in both our parts of the US. You are still in New Orleans. I left New Orleans and I'm back in Los Angeles. Where in New Orleans are you right now? And please describe your location to the listeners so they can imagine you sitting there.

01:48
Christian Winther
All right. I am in my house, which is an old house in New Orleans from, I guess it was built in 1875, in an old area called the Garden District, an historic area in New Orleans.

02:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And what does the room look like?

02:04
Christian Winther
I'm sitting here in my kitchen, ready to speak with you.

02:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Fantastic. You and I met 20 years ago at a famous restaurant called Galatoire's on Bourbon Street, the very famous party street in New Orleans. You actually moved to New Orleans in 1997, so you have a long history of living in the city. But you actually came to New Orleans already as a 14-year-old boy. You traveled with your dad and it was the jazz history of the city that attracted you. Why were you, at just 14 years old, so fascinated by jazz that you made a trip to New Orleans?

02:43
Christian Winther
I started, very early, listening to jazz music. I was probably 12 years old. I just picked up the clarinet and my dad had a large collection of jazz records. So every day after school I would come home, listen to records, and that's how I got into it.

03:01
Christian Winther
And I just liked the way it sounded and I would try to pick stuff out on the clarinet and play along, which is something most jazz musicians do when they start out and try to learn the music. And I guess pretty much from that time on, it was something I spent a lot of time on and wanted to do.

03:18
Christian Winther
A couple of years later, we made the trip to New Orleans and went to all the old places, and saw some of the old guys that were still around at that point. I remember coming to Preservation Hall and my dad just kind of dumped me there for a couple of nights.

03:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
He did? 14-year-old? Hmm. Okay!

03:35
Christian Winther
Yep, yep. I would sit there on the floor and listen and I thought it was great. And that's one of the places I play today.

03:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I mean, 14 years old, and you said 12 before, listening to jazz music, that must have been special at the time. What were your friends listening to?

03:50
Christian Winther
That's a good question. Popular music, I guess. But I enjoyed doing something different and just got caught up in it and thought it was great. I was 13, 14, I started getting gigs and playing with people in Denmark, and that was the start of it.

04:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What kind of impression did New Orleans leave on this 14-year-old Christian when he was there dumped in Preservation Hall by his dad, who was probably partying at Bourbon Street while you were focusing on serious business?

04:23
Christian Winther
Yes, he could have been. It was a great experience for me, obviously, and I decided at that point that it would be nice to come back and see it again and check it out some more. That's how I left it.

04:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You started working professionally as a saxophonist, right? It was not the clarinet.

04:41
Christian Winther
Yeah. 13, as a clarinettist, and then probably 14, I picked up the saxophone.

04:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When did you start playing and where did they hire you for jobs? How did they know about this 13-year-old boy who was ready for professional gigs?

04:59
Christian Winther
Well, there were a lot of older guys playing jazz music in Holbæk where I grew up. So I would go and listen to them at different jazz clubs and bars. Sometimes I would bring the clarinet and they would let me play a couple songs and that's how they got to know about the kid.

05:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So you would make yourself seen and available?

05:19
Christian Winther
Yes.

05:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You were from Holbæk, which is a part of Copenhagen. What was the trajectory that led you from being a school kid in Holbæk to the school in New Orleans?

05:34
Christian Winther
When I was 17, I moved to Copenhagen like so many people do. I spent a couple years just playing with different people again in Copenhagen. I decided I would like to go to the States to attend music school. So I checked into different schools in New York and also I knew there was a great jazz school in New Orleans as well.

05:51
Christian Winther
So I looked into that and actually made a trip to New Orleans again, and met with Ellis Marsalis, who was the leader for the jazz program at the University of New Orleans back then. I spoke to him after a gig and he was like, oh yeah, you should go ahead and apply. I got home, sent my tape to him, and they ended up accepting me there. It was great.

06:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You became a student there. Today you live in the Garden District. Where did you settle when you first came to New Orleans? How did you pick the location for where you would call your home?

06:29
Christian Winther
When I moved to New Orleans, I didn't really know anybody. It's an overwhelming feeling when you move to a different country. You don't really know anybody. You're trying to establish yourself. And so I ended up living in quite a few different places in the beginning. First I rented a small apartment, and then I lived at the school for a while.

06:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Where was your first apartment?

06:51
Christian Winther
It was on a street called Prytania Street.

06:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's a famous street.

06:55
Christian Winther
Yeah, uptown in New Orleans.

06:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was student life like in the US? How was the music school that you went to? Was it everything you expected? Did you learn what you wanted to learn? Were your fellow students inspiring?

07:13
Christian Winther
I think at that point, I knew a lot about my craft theory and harmony. I had studied that in Copenhagen and so I think the biggest part of being there was meeting all these students that came from all over the world and all over the United States. And that was very inspiring for me, just seeing where everybody else was at and feeling yourself out, where you fit in, and what you had to learn to be on the highest level.

07:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I stayed at the Copper Vine Inn, which is a small boutique hotel in New Orleans. I prefer boutique hotels, because they have a lot of personality. When you and I met, I walked from the Warehouse District to Snug Harbor in the Marigny area of New Orleans where we met. It was only two and a half miles, so not that bad, but the humidity made it a challenge. How did you cope with the subtropical climate when you arrived in this very different climate to Denmark? It's very humid.

08:12
Christian Winther
I think it takes a while to get used to. And then of course the summers are the worst or the most warm here. So that's a tough time for a Danish person or anybody really. So it takes a while and then you get used to the heat and you learn to stay in the air conditioning as much as possible.

08:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you like that climate?

08:32
Christian Winther
It's nice in the winter time, the fall and the spring.

08:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Talking about the weather, you also have hurricanes in New Orleans. And the world remembers all too well Hurricane Katrina from August 2005. The failure of the levees destroyed 80% of the homes in New Orleans when the city was flooded. Hurricane Katrina was one of the costliest disasters in US history. Over 1,800 people died, and it displaced millions of people, of whom many have not yet returned to New Orleans.

09:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was your personal Katrina story? Everyone in New Orleans has one. How did you experience this catastrophe?

09:13
Christian Winther
We ended up leaving New Orleans the night before Katrina hit and went to Houston on a long trek there by car. At that point, we really didn't know how long it was gonna take, what was going on, and we ended up watching on TV how the levees broke. So that was very surreal seeing that.

09:31
Christian Winther
And then at that point, obviously, you find out it's not gonna be in a day or two that you get back. We were fortunate in the sense that our house didn't get flooded, it didn't get water. I guess about a month after Katrina, we were back in town.

09:46
Christian Winther
And that wasn't really much going on. And it was just empty and you couldn't get to a grocery store and it was closed. And it just took a few months for it to come back where it functioned. So it was a process for sure.

10:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How does a Dane cope with these extreme weather situations that are not the same as in Denmark?

10:12
Christian Winther
It helped at that point when you were young and you just go with the flow and make it work. But it definitely was a crazy experience.

10:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It did not make you want to leave?

10:22
Christian Winther
No, I felt there was a way back and I fairly quickly got back to work playing music. Even though it was slow, I stuck with it.

10:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
A lot of workers from Central America and South America came to rebuild the city, and I hear many of the locals speak about how much they love these workers. Has New Orleans been rebuilt and recovered fully or do you sense that it has permanently damaged the city and left scars? How do you feel about New Orleans before and after Katrina?

10:56
Christian Winther
Good question. It definitely changed. It never really was the same as before the storm. When you look at the music, it was a lot of local musicians. And for me, coming to New Orleans, it was about playing with these guys that were locals and were the names of New Orleans music and embodied the music of New Orleans. So that was always important to me and I got to do that.

11:23
Christian Winther
And I think a lot of that scene changed after the storm. Because there was a lot of publicity on TV and you had a lot of people coming to New Orleans wanting to take part, which was great, but also it changed what was going on musically and culturally.

11:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you feel New Orleans is back? Tourists are important for your business, because a lot go to the jazz venues.

11:43
Christian Winther
Yeah, in that sense it's definitely back. It's just different. We got plenty of people coming to New Orleans all the time, so I think it's very much back and got back pretty quick after Katrina really. But just a different kind of New Orleans, not the same as it was.

12:00
Christian Winther
There were a lot of musicians and people in culture that didn't make it back because they got stuck in other places in the country. And of course that changed the cultural scene and the music scene. It is definitely a different New Orleans than it was before.

12:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The city is known as "The Big Easy." It's pretty laid back and people are in no hurry in New Orleans. Or maybe that's because of the weather, which can make it hard to focus. You need air con for sure, which you had to turn off because it made a sound on our recordings.

12:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But do you think "The Big Easy" is a fitting nickname for New Orleans? And is it also "The Big Easy" for you? I mean, you're a professional working there, but do you also take it easy in New Orleans?

12:44
Christian Winther
I mean, it's always a challenge too. I've been playing music here for, I guess, 25 years or more. It's a challenge to keep being on the scene and creating music and keeping it interesting. Of course it is.

13:00
Christian Winther
But I think I've been fortunate to work with many of my favorite musicians over the years. And playing with them is just how I really learned to play and also discovered how I wanted my music to sound. The traditions are so deep in New Orleans, so I have a lot of appreciation for that.

13:15
Christian Winther
I also didn't come to the United States to attempt to be a Danish jazz musician in New Orleans. I wanted to learn the American jazz tradition and that was my goal. Jazz was invented in New Orleans and the rest of the world adopted it.

13:29
Christian Winther
So I wanted to be here and play the music from here and be a composer and a band leader. It really helped me figure out what I wanted my music to sound like and what I wanted to present. So I think it was a good way to get into it.

13:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The city has a very special history. It was a French colony, then it was a Spanish colony and then French again. Then it was sold to the United States. There were slaves from Africa in the early days, and jazz was their music or it came out of their music. Can you explain, better than me, what made New Orleans give birth to and become the mother of jazz?

14:12
Christian Winther
Yes. Well, you can say that American music really started here in New Orleans. It's the birthplace of all that came after. You had Congo Square where slaves would meet and play on Sundays. And from that, jazz started blues, and really anything after that came from here.

14:31
Christian Winther
So, it's the birthplace and it was always a melting pot for culture and music, like you described, with being Spanish and French and also being the most northern port of the Caribbean. You have a lot of influence from the Caribbean too, with rhythms and stuff like that.

14:45
Christian Winther
So definitely a melting pot where you can always sense the tradition when you're here. And that's something that is important for me. I always feel close to it being in New Orleans. Like the roots of music, of jazz, you can't help but feel that constantly.

15:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you sense that everywhere? Do you sense the history in the streets of New Orleans?

15:06
Christian Winther
Oh, for sure. And also when you go to play music, it's such a very specific cultural thing when you play music in New Orleans. You always feel that tradition and the connectedness to the roots.

15:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned that they would meet in the square. There's also an interesting story as to how they got all the instruments. Can you explain how people learned to play those various instruments and how it became different from how these instruments were used before?

15:36
Christian Winther
You had Spanish military bands bring instruments to the city and I guess people picked them up from there and started exploring.

15:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's how jazz became spontaneous and experimental.

15:50
Christian Winther
I think it could probably only have happened in New Orleans. And after that jazz moved north, Chicago to New York, and now it's all over the world. Everybody loves jazz and it's America's present to the world — all these different cultures and traditions being brought together, all these different people being here.

16:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We met at Snug Harbor, I mentioned, and this is one of the legendary jazz venues in New Orleans, and so is Preservation Hall. What makes these two places special from your point of view?

16:24
Christian Winther
I mean they're definitely my two favorite jazz clubs in New Orleans. So you have Snug Harbor, which is more the modern side of jazz. They present a listening room where people have come from all over the world every night, so it is a great place to play there. And Preservation Hall, a long tradition of traditional jazz starting in the early '60s. A great place to play, if you want to hear the traditional music of New Orleans traditional jazz.

16:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We mentioned before that you were 14 when you were sitting on the floor of Preservation Hall listening to the music. Do you remember the first time that you yourself was on stage in that same place playing music? And how did it feel for you? Was it surreal? And was it surreal with the people you were actually playing with at the time?

17:14
Christian Winther
I actually don't think I remember the first time, but it's always been a special thing to me, to sit in those chairs that were occupied by great musicians coming before me. It's a tradition and it's an oral thing that's passed on through generations in New Orleans. In that sense, it's very different than other places, where people might go to music school.

17:37
Christian Winther
Here, it's passed on from the bandstand and from older musicians. You pick up how they do it, what they do. And that was super important to me, just learning that way of being hired to be on the bandstand with great musicians and listening to them every night and just having a chance to play every night. I mean, there's probably not many places in the world where you can, as a musician, play every night and just learn that way.

18:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You've told me that Stan Getz and Dexter Gordon are on your list of idols. They also lived in Denmark for a little while. You have also played with Shannon Powell, Herlin Riley and Wendell Brunious. Talk about what it's like to finally be able to work with some of the people you've been looking up to your whole life. What kind of an experience is that for a young man to get to do that?

18:30
Christian Winther
Yeah. I started doing that maybe a few years after I got here, and it was very special for me at that point, seeing how they want to do stuff and being open to learn from musicians that had been doing it their whole lives. That's how I learned to play. I will always be appreciative of those guys for teaching me stuff.

18:50
Christian Winther
These days people are very sensitive and you can't say stuff, but they were very specific about what they wanted. And if you did something wrong, they would also tell you, and sometimes that's a good way to learn.

19:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you mentioned before you have to learn to communicate the American way when you play an instrument with an American jazz band. What does this mean? How does a young man from Holbæk learn to play the American way? And what is that sound? How do you tune into that?

19:23
Christian Winther
You really have to experience it on stage, being there every night, being able to play your instrument six, seven nights a week. I was playing all the time when I started out here. You can't get that anywhere else.

19:35
Christian Winther
And I think just trying to learn from what's going on on the bandstand, listening. Listening is such an important part that some people forget — learning to find your lane, where you fit in a band, and doing the things that's appropriate for the situation that makes for a stronger band.

19:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How many hours a day do you have your saxophone in your hand? How many hours a day do you play?

20:00
Christian Winther
I guess I was maybe playing seven days a week, that was when I was younger. So now I might do five nights a week or so. But every day, three, four hours, and sometimes I practice too. So then it becomes more.

20:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you obviously work a lot at night. How does everyday look in New Orleans? What time do you get up? What do you do? Then you go to a gig and you get home. What does it look like?

20:27
Christian Winther
It's kind of like playing music, you improvise. That's one of the things I appreciate about being a musician too. It's never the same. You don't play the same music, you play with different people, and the music sounds different depending on who you play with. It's never the same.

20:45
Christian Winther
That's something I appreciate. And of course, I got to do the same stuff everybody else gotta do. Get up in the morning, take my kid to school, whatever it takes to make it all work.

20:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are a performer, a band leader, as well as a composer. You've composed many albums, and they are classical jazz, like the album Refuge in Sound. When did you start doing that?

21:08
Christian Winther
I guess I started a little later composing. It was something that I picked up when I started making my own CDs, my own recordings with my band. Early thirties, I guess. I was signed with a label called SteepleChase, an old jazz label, and I would go to New York once a year to record CDs.

21:29
Christian Winther
At that point I wanted to create my own sound and my band sound. I think it's important for musicians these days to write music, because it creates a sound that's unique to your band instead of just playing stuff that everybody plays.

21:44
Christian Winther
I would go to New York and do these CDs once a year and pick all my favorite musicians to play with in New York. And that was a great experience at that point for me. And I would try to do a lot of original music in those sessions. And that's how it started. My last CD was only original music. So that's how I feel my band should sound and it's kind of written for my band and the kind of sound I want to present.

22:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And when you do that, you actually have live recordings. You have all the musicians in the studio recording live, right? You hear a lot of music is made on a computer with different elements put together. You play live, right?

22:29
Christian Winther
True. When we did the sessions in New York, that would be very old school. SteepleChase, they're known for having Stan Getz and all these old Bebop musicians on the label. So the old school way of doing that is maybe having four or five hours in the studio to make a whole CD.

22:46
Christian Winther
You had to be prepared and be ready to do it right. You couldn't really mess up. At that point, that was a great experience for me, just being able to really focus and get into that level of consistency.

22:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And why go to New York to do that? No possibilities in New Orleans?

23:02
Christian Winther
I guess at that point, the label always did the recording sessions in New York, so that's why we did that, but also because I was enjoying playing with the New York musicians for my music. That made a lot of sense to me musically.

23:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have a Selmer tenor saxophone from 1950, which has quite an interesting story. It used to belong to the Philadelphia musician Louis Judge, who was a friend of John Coltrane. How did it end up in your possession through his daughter Margot Judge in 2010? And how important is this saxophone for you?

23:38
Christian Winther
She was looking for a musician to carry the saxophone further and take it on after her father passed away. And I had a friend that she connected with, and he called me and said, this might be something for you. I ended up playing the saxophone and it sure made a big difference, that I kind of found my sound through that horn.

23:58
Christian Winther
And I've been playing that horn for a good 15 years now, I guess. I have several Selmers and several horns, but that one's definitely my favorite. And I just like the history that comes with it and the fact that Louis Judge played it, and then Coltrane played it.

24:13
Christian Winther
And these guys were — Coltrane's one of my favorite musicians, of course. How can I not be a saxophone player? Just the history of the horn and always being a jazz horn, so to speak. It's great for me.

24:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How would you describe what this means to you, the saxophone?

24:28
Christian Winther
When I found the saxophone, that was really my voice, and my way of finding what I had to say musically.

24:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did your dad come to listen to you play jazz in New Orleans? And since he seems to have been very influential in you picking your career, how did he feel about his boy playing in those legendary places?

24:49
Christian Winther
Yeah, he came many times to New Orleans and I would take him out to Snug Harbor and Preservation Hall. And so he's seen me in all those places and I think he was always proud. And you always hear the story. A lot of parents, oh, don't be a jazz musician, don't do that. But he never was like that.

25:08
Christian Winther
He was cool and he was always pushing me and saying, yeah, if that's what you want to do, do it. So that was great. He also got to hear me with my own band many times in Denmark when we went on tours there in different jazz clubs in Denmark. And he would always show up and he just really appreciated it.

25:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned you would also play in Denmark. You have traveled the world with your saxophone. Where have you played outside the US?

25:40
Christian Winther
I've been to so many places touring — Europe and Denmark, of course, South America, Asia, the Middle East.

25:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Anything that stands out, experiences in those fantastic places that stand out to you?

25:53
Christian Winther
Oh wow. I'm just so appreciative of having this career for all these years and being able to play music and meet all these different people and cultures and just being able to see it all. I don't even know where to start. One time we went to Thailand, played for the king there in his summer palace.

26:15
Christian Winther
We flew all the way to Thailand on first class, and then we played for, I think, 45 minutes at his castle. And it was just him and a few of his friends. He was a big jazz fan too. Back in the '60s, he would've brought all kinds of American jazz musicians over there. That was kind of interesting.

26:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That stands out.

26:34
Christian Winther
I think so. And another time we went to Brazil and played in a big park in São Paulo. I think there were 30,000 or 20,000 people. It was just huge and just them loving it and dancing and enjoying the music. Very cool.

26:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you in New Orleans have a Danish community that you belong to? Do you ever socialize with Danes or have you become very Americanized or New Orleans-lized because New Orleans does not belong to the US — I hear — that's what they say in New Orleans.

27:10
Christian Winther
I believe it. Well, there's not a whole lot of Danish people here, to be honest. I have a few people I meet sometimes, when they're around. And then there used to be a Norwegian church where Scandinavian people would go and they would have jazz on Sundays, and I played there many times and that was pretty cool. That was like a little Scandinavian thing where people from Scandinavia who had been in New Orleans for a long time would show up and that was nice.

27:35
Christian Winther
Being around Danish people always feels like home, more so than American people probably. I feel a connection. It's always great when I get to hang out with Danish people in the United States. It's kind of like you all already know each other in some way. Maybe that's silly, but you feel connected in some way, I think.

27:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I know you've played for Prince Joachim at the Danish Embassy in Washington DC and you played for Mary when she was still a princess. Now she's Queen Mary.

28:05
Christian Winther
That's right. My band played for Princess Mary at the time in Houston at the modern museum there. I think she was visiting Houston. And it was a nice party and hopefully they enjoyed the music.

28:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And the Danish Embassy in DC? That must have been an experience.

28:24
Christian Winther
I played there quite a few times and also some of the other Scandinavian embassies in DC. They have a summer jazz festival they call Nordic Jazz. I played that a few times and that's always been so much fun bringing my band there and just presenting my music.

28:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Having been in the United States since 1997 — it's a long time — do you feel Danish or do you feel American and have you become a citizen? Are you a dual citizen like I am?

28:54
Christian Winther
I am. When Denmark opened up for dual citizenship, I did go ahead and become a dual citizen of Denmark and the United States. So I feel kind of Danish and kind of American, it's kind of in between. But whenever I go to Denmark, I always feel very much at home. As soon as I get to the airport, it's like, this feels like home. So. You know, it's, it's still very much home, I think.

29:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
If you were to choose which flag to put in your house, which one would you choose? That was a cheeky question.

29:29
Christian Winther
Yep. Yep. Well, I guess both.

29:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you miss anything about Denmark? Or are you content with the way life is in New Orleans?

29:38
Christian Winther
I do miss it. There's been some times when I didn't get a chance to go there for a couple of years or whatever, and then I really start to miss it, and then I have to go. So to go once a year, I should probably do that, at least. You never know, maybe I'll end up living there at some point.

29:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I know you have a daughter, she's 19 and in college and she doesn't speak Danish. Do you ever see yourself and your family going to Denmark, and maybe teach her Danish at some point?

30:07
Christian Winther
It might be too late for that, I don't know, teaching Danish. She's American. If she wanted to, I would be up for it. She might want to stay here. I don't know, we'll see. She's doing great — honor roll student, digging in that whole part of life in college and working — and I'm very proud of her.

30:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you think back to the young Christian sitting at home listening to all the records and all the dreams that he had, would you say that this young Christian got all his dreams fulfilled? Or is the 51-year-old Christian still dreaming of stuff?

30:39
Christian Winther
There's more stuff to come. I'm very thankful for all the stuff I've experienced and all the great music that I've been able to be around and play over the years. Right now, I got enough music ready that I composed for my next CD.

30:54
Christian Winther
I don't know quite yet when that's gonna be done, but I'm planning for it, and I think that's gonna be a good one. I've been writing this music for a few years now. So as far as being a composer, that's definitely my strongest output so far.

31:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay. Well, my final question for you. You're only 51 years old, so you have the whole world in front of you. But where would you like your final resting place to be? The cemeteries in New Orleans are pretty outstanding, I have to say. There are so many. They are so cool. But maybe you have a different idea. Maybe where would you like to stay at the end of your life?

31:33
Christian Winther
Yeah, I don't really know yet. It will have to play out, see what happens, and how it all comes together. But I love New Orleans and I love Denmark, so we'll see.

31:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's gonna be one of those two places.

31:46
Christian Winther
Oh yeah.

31:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Alright, Christian, on that note, thank you so much for being with us on Danish Originals. We really appreciate you being with us from New Orleans.

31:55
Christian Winther
Thank you so much for having me, and it was great talking to you.

31:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thank you.

32:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Christian Winther chose P.S. Krøyer's Søstudie. Skagen or Seascape. Skagen from 1882 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.