Stephan Spenser Seo

“Panagia” is Stephan Micus’ 20th album for ECM, and it coincides with his 60th birthday in January 2013. The Greek word Panagia is one of the names of the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ. Stephan Micus’ album takes six Byzantine Greek prayers and sets them in his own inimitable way with instruments he has collected in years of travels round the world. “The album alternates sung poems with instrumental tracks and thus has a clearly symmetrical, even ritualistic, structure”, says Micus.

The German-French composer Mark Andre (b.1964) is one of the most important representatives of New Music. His twelve "Miniatures" for string quartet were composed in 2014/17 as a commission from the Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio's "musica viva", the Festival d'Automne à Paris and the ProQuartet-CEMC, funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Andre created his organ work "Himmelfahrt" (Ascension), funded by the Siemens Music Foundation, in 2018 on behalf of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The orchestral work woher…wohin was written between 2015 and 2017 as a composition commission by BR's "musica viva" in conjunction with the Happy New Ears prize for composition from the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation. The live recordings of all three works are now being released in the CD edition of Bavarian Radio's "musica viva" concert series on BR-KLASSIK.

'Snow' is the title Stephan Micus has given to his 18th album for ECM. It is the outcome of continuous work he has carried out on journeys and in the studio since the release of his 'On the Wing' in early spring 2006. 'To me, snow is one of the most beautiful of all natural phenomena', explains Micus, who has been living in Spain for many years. 'It’s closely associated with lasting impressions of my original home in Bavaria, especially the long moonlit walks I used to take when I lived in the Alpine foothills. I've always regarded snow as the essence of magic, even more so today now that there's so little of it and the glaciers are disappearing.' Micus's music has always drawn on impressions of nature and the countryside.

7 years have passed since the release of my “Guitar Heroes” Album (with Tommy Emmanuel, Biréli Lagrène and Stochelo Rosenberg as guests). I always wanted to bring the concept of mixing gypsy swing classics and original compositions with titles from other musical genres (pop, latin, western swing, etc.) to stage. I have managed to record 4 concerts over the past few years, of which the long-awaited LIVE CD with a selection of the different performances is finally available. In addition to my trio, Biréli Lagrène and Stochelo Rosenberg are on board again. Richard Smith and Olli Soikkeli could be won as additional guests.

Stephan Micus is a one-man universe of sound. He collects and studies instruments from around the world and creates his own musical journeys with them. This is his 24th solo album for ECM created in his studio with many recordings and overdubs. The twelve tracks on Winter’s End feature two new instruments, the chikulo from Mozambique and a Central African-style tongue drum. In addition there’s kalimba (thumb piano), sinding (Gambian harp), Egyptian nay flute, Japanese nohkan flute, Balinese suling flute, bowed sattar from Xinjiang, Tibetan cymbals, Peruvian charango and a 12-string guitar. Most of these have never sounded together before.

Being a perpetual student, Stephan Micus usually makes world music by default. He breathes patience and skill into the exotic instruments he uncovers, but certainly with respectful bending of the rules along the way. Towards the Wind follows in the same exploratory tradition – educated, but unassuming as to the nature of what an instrument is "supposed to do." Here, the album evokes an easily digestible cross section of Middle Eastern mysticism – swirling sand dunes, rust-colored sunsets, and sacred spaces.

We not only relied on interpretations of well-known standards, but also collected ideas for our own pieces in the run-up to the recordings, which bring our respective handwriting to life even more clearly. It was great fun to play our music, which was already recorded after two afternoons. The reason is that we always took the fresher sounding “first take”.