Towards The Wind

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With a career stretching back to 1977, and sixteen recordings to his credit (almost all of them on the ECM label), Stephan Micus has quietly created a very singular identity for himself. He is a connoisseur of ethnic instruments from all over the world - strings, flutes, reed instruments and percussion - and even a virtuoso on many of them, but he plays his own compositions exclusively, rather than promoting any particular ethnic tradition or body of work. He is resolutely acoustic, a purist even, with no use for synthesized drones or other embellishments that would otherwise identify him with ambient or new age movements. To my knowledge, he has never played with other musicians, at least formally, and has never invited other musicians to participate on his many recordings. However, Micus has no reservations about using studio technology to multi-track himself, and his albums usually contain a mixture of solo performances on various instruments, and simulated duets, trios and even large ensembles where he might combine multiple percussion tracks with stringed instruments and one or more ethnic flutes and/or reeds. For example, one track on this new recording, "Birds of Dawn," lists Micus as playing "2 kalimba, duduk, 6 shakuhachi, 3 dondon, 2 sattar" (the kalimba, of course, is the well known African "thumb piano," and the shakuhachi is the traditional Japanese flute. The other, more obscure instruments, albeit typical choices for Micus, include Ghanan talking drums (dondon), a double-reed Turkish woodwind (duduk), and a bowed string instrument (sattar). On another piece, "Eastern Princess," Micus also treats the listener to one of his rare wordless vocals, sung fervently in a clear high tenor voice.

Micus' original compositions throughout his career have obviously been based on traditional ethnic folk modes and melodies, and he typically favors a slow, soulful style that conveys a general feeling of spiritual yearning - once described (in relation to East Indian music), as "a longing for the divine." Micus has favored the shakuhachi flute because of its expressive qualities, but his prominent use of the Turkish dudek on this recording is new, and it reflects his recent studies with dudek master Jivan Gasparian. The bass dudek that Micus plays here is more normally used as a drone accompaniment for the smaller standard dudek, but Micus plays it with great nuance and subtlety, and it is every bit the shakuhachi's expressive equal. Fitting too, that Micus would have come under the influence of Gasparian, whose own music has sometimes been called "the saddest in the world." This is also Micus' gift, to be able to express musically the strange bittersweet fact of being human, where the evanescent joys of love and success give way over and over again (and then finally) to the poignancy of loss and dissolution. Towards the Wind (and almost all of Micus' substantial body of earlier recordings) is the perfect music for thoughtful late night contemplation of the human condition.