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 The Stone Music Klaus Feßmann dips his hands in the large water bowls beside the singing stone stele. He wets the stone thoroughly, lays his hands on it, and with a gentle touch begins to coax the sounds from the stone. These deep, roaring, shimmering high, soft tones have never before been heard. It is impossible to order this pure, extensive sound spectrum, impossible to locate it. The tones fill the room, remain long and are felt in the human body. Friedemann “Fried” Dähn joins the SoundStone tones imperceptibly, reinforces them, expands them and creates his own special world. With his subtle, developing sound layers, he structures the boundless stone sounds, building a timeless polyphony. Dähn has developed his electric cello into the congenial partner for this sound world. His manner of playing his acoustic cello approaches his electronic sounds and allows him to go his own way. Manfred Kniel delivers much more than rhythmic accents with his extensive water and stone percussive instruments. Pebbles scrape against each other, grinding as they collide; they are stepped on, patted or struck. Rocks along with pebbles in water produce sounds like steel drums. Two water bowls are the beginning of the fascinating, until now unheard world of water sounds. A simple pipe as a didgeridoo, and the use of unusual archaic wind instruments show a musician who can handle all kinds of complex rhythms and materials supremely. Klaus Fessmann Manfred Kniel Friedemann 'Fried' Dähn   History Klaus Feßmann Fried Dähn Manfred Kniel began to play together and develop Sound Stone music nine years ago. Friedemann Dähn and Klaus Feßmann have been playing together for the last twelve years, with their first co-operative musical experience in the Beuron Monastery, Swhere, along with the monastery music school, the first SoundStone and cello sounds blended. The momentous experience of kindred musicality took place in the monastery on a chilly October morning at 2am. The composition was a joint work for acoustic cello and grand piano. This was the starting point for the musical cooperation of two unconventional musicians who congenially unite their unconventionality in concert. Klaus Feßmann´s SoundStone determined the tempo and the direction of the music. Just as the stone gave up its tones, phantasy, creativity and the image of a new kind of music arose; a music into which everything learned in previous musical experience flowed, a music which measured itself with the stone. The drum set which Manfred Kniel had brought was rejected within minutes. Gradually he began to develop his own percussive instruments. The first one was made from materials found near the Neckar River in Tübingen. With different-sized pebbles, Manfred Kniel built his first pebble box which he played with stone sticks, while his feet articulated the rhythm. Other instruments followed; stands with stone slabs, stones of different sizes, shapes and colorus found along paths, the hanging drill cores which sound like chimes, large stone slabs which ring like bells. In the meantime, Manfred Kniel rubs stone slabs with various materials or instruments and, drills holes in stone blocks in order to play them with wet pebbles. He has added water as a sound element. Two large bowls are filled with the water and played using the surfaces of his hands. He achieves various sound colours from water by adding liquids which make the sound warmer, more enticing. A new extensive palate of sound possibilities has been created, all using stone and water, the materials which were at the beginning of time, and are now the instruments themselves. These are the origins of a new, incomparable, unimitable, unique music; a music which has become irreplaceable. We prefer to play in churches, old churches where the original stone floors, still a part of the resonance space, have not been replaced by sandstone. It is sometimes cold there; 4 degrees in the Kollegien Church in Salzburg. But it "sounds" there, which is what is important.   |