Danish composer, producer, and jazz pianist August Rosenbaum comes from a family of strong musical tradition – and with close ties to designer and architect Poul Henningsen.
For the launch of the 2026 Limited Edition the PH 1/1 Piano Table Lamp, August Rosenbaum composed a unique interpretive piece performed on a piano designed by Poul Henningsen, and Louis Poulsen met him afterwards for a discussion on light, sound, and lasting impressions.
I think many of us are used to concerts often involving lots of changing, coloured lights that are constantly moving, but for me it’s distracting because it leaves very little room for the dynamic that you create together with the audience.
For me, it’s important that the interplay between sound and light is quite minimalistic. Its most important role is to create a space where people have the freedom to shape their own narrative based on what they perceive.
When Louis Poulsen approached August to help create a unique composition for the PH Piano Table Lamp, the question was – how do you translate an object into sound?
When I’m composing for something specific, there needs to be some sort of emotional connection for it to develop. It could be a person, a place, or a story. I often try to create a framework or set of constraints to give me a foundation to work from. It works better than starting with a blank canvas.
In the case with the PH’s piano lamp I knew quite a lot about him through my family’s history of cabaret theatre, so the connection was already present.
Today, a lot of the culture we consume is downscaled into reel-format. It’s convenient and easy to take in, but it doesn’t leave a mark.
I think what stays with us is often that which defies conventional expression. Something off-kilter, something that doesn’t behave as we might expect.
Personally, I notice the things that take time. A slow, drawn-out piece of music, for example, where your attention can wander off in all sorts of directions, and where your sense of time might fade a little – which is a rarity these days. But it also requires you to allow a space for it, to tune into a different frequency.
I don’t think too much about how my own work is received. But when someone comes up to me and tells me that my music has meant something special to them, it of course becomes very present. It’s difficult to predict whether you’ve created something truly significant.
The most important thing for me is to have an inner curiosity – that way, art, and design too, automatically find its purpose.
I like it when a design tells you something about the place where it was created. If, for example, there’s a specific factory name or a specific year engraved on a chair, you are able to form a stronger connection to it.
Then it takes on a historical significance, and you can sit on your chair and ponder what was happening in the history of the world when that chair was made.
The Rosenbaum family has close ties to the cabaret scene, of which Poul Henningsen was a significant figure, and through his grandfather August heard plenty of stories about the renown ‘PH’.
My family has always been part of the cabaret scene – and my grandfather, Simon Rosenbaum, knew Poul Henningsen. When I was young, I thought cabaret seemed a bit corny, but my family took enormous pride in it, and as I grew older, I began to understand why.
Back then, cabaret was a political free space and a place where resistance and criticism of contemporary society could be voiced. Poul Henningsen’s cabaret song, ‘Man binder os på mund og hånd’ (‘They bind our mouths and hands’, red.), about the resistance against the Nazi occupation, moves me deeply every time I hear it.
My grandfather was a little younger than Poul Henningsen and undoubtedly looked up to him – but I think he was also a bit annoyed with him at times.
I particularly remember him telling the story of Poul Henningsen insisting on playing his accordion at an event where my grandfather was due to go on stage. That was very typical of PH, I think. That unfiltered nature which probably fascinated most people.
I suppose it’s the timeless aspect of his design. He created something that is very much an ‘evergreen’, to use a musician’s term.
Today, many of his designs are probably acts as a status symbol, but I don’t think that was his aim. That’s why I would say it’s important that we broaden the narrative about him. That we don’t just talk about him as the designer PH, but about all the other things he was as well. His socially critical approach, his desire for change, for equality and solidarity, freedom – that sort of thing.
