Stephan Micus – review
Kings Place, London
John Fordham
The Guardian, Thursday 11 April 2013 18.21 BST
Since he has improvised, composed, researched and recorded almost entirely
on his own for four decades, it's tempting to describe the multi-instrumentalist,
singer and self-taught ethnomusicologist Stephan Micus as world music's
most productive hermit – except that he's travelled hundreds of thousands of
miles in that time, insatiably learning from intimate encounters with that
dwindling number of traditional musicians still untouched by globalisation.
The undemonstrative, monk-like German-born musician played Kings Place –
boasting an acoustic tailor-made for him – with a mix of older pieces and
songs from his new Panagia album for ECM, a characteristically personal
reworking of traditional Byzantine Greek prayers.
Micus has played everything from bamboo flutes to rustic stringed
instruments, from percussion to stones, and has overdubbed his voice to
make full-sized choirs – but he's uninterested in cloning his sources, and
adapts his discoveries to his own ends. He began with a piece for two tin
whistles ("British – it's written on them") played in vivacious harmony and
evoking the sounds of village dances and Andean panpipes. He accompanied
a solemnly sung Greek prayer with a glittering shower of zither sounds,
evoked a desolate winter on the Japanese nohkan flute against a prerecorded clamour of metallic strings, then thumb-picked an almost Steve
Reichian dance on an African box strung with spokes. Tranquillity returned
with the sighs of a shakuhachi, but Micus added bite with another ringing,
guitar-like backing track.
The second half brought more revelations, not least the Armenian bass
duduk, which unleashed spookily sonorous purrs and car-horn growls that
seemed incompatible with its modest dimensions. More fragile flute music,
gently insistent vocals, a beseeching theme like a shakuhachi flute-player
mimicking the Miles Davis of Sketches of Spain, and a delicate tin-whistle
encore wound up a transcendental meditation of a concert that nobody on the
planet other than Stephan Micus could possibly have performed.