To the Rising Moon is Stephan Micus’ 26th solo album for ECM. It features instruments from Colombia, India, Xinjiang (China), Bavaria, Cambodia, Egypt and Borneo, which have never before been combined in one composition. People often call themselves a multi-instrumentalist when they play three or four instruments, but Stephan plays eight on this album alone and countless more since his first ECM album, Implosions, in 1977.
Here, there’s one that takes centre stage that he’s playing for the first time, the Colombian tiple. It’s a little smaller than a guitar and is considered the national instrument of Colombia. Although still frequently played in its traditional, highly-European influenced context, modern composers hardly make use of it. “For me this instrument has the quality of light, of something shining,” Stephan says. “It’s like these metal strings are sparkling and for me the tiple pieces have a very positive energy.”
The tiple has 12 steel strings in four triple courses and it’s a composition for two tiples, "To the Rising Sun", that opens the album with ringing strings.
“I’ve been to Colombia three times,” says Stephan, “and I really love the books of Gabriel García Márquez, particularly Love in the Time of Cholera. My first trip was mainly to try and experience the long ago world of this book and I went to Mompos on the River Magdalena. A friend had this tiple, lent it to me and I fell in love with it. Anyone who plays guitar can do something on the tiple.” Stephan got one made for him in 2017 by Orlando Pimentel, one of the leading tiple makers, and this is the first time he’s played it on one of his recordings.
On the album the plucked tiple pieces alternate with more reflective tracks with bowed strings. The first of these is "Dream Within Dream", with six dilruba, a South Asian bowed instrument that Stephan gets to sound very lyrical and cello-like. “You won’t hear a dilruba from India with this kind of sound, which I found only after long experiments with alternative stringings. I always have this tendency to prefer the lower sounds - and so have commissioned instrument makers to build lower versions of the Moroccan genbri, Japanese shakuhachi and Armenian duduk.”
As well as playing instruments, Stephan uses his voice, although he uses it like an instrument. He doesn’t sing words, but improvised syllables, just there for their sound. The track "In Your Eyes" has three tiples plus voice in the mood of a poetic love song.
On the next bowed-string track, to suggest the delicacy of "The Veil", Stephan uses a much lighter instrument than the dilruba, the Uigur sattar. It's a long-necked bowed instrument with one playing string plus lots of sympathetic strings. The three sattar create a wonderfully transparent sound, something like a prayer. Stephan Micus is probably the only Western composer to use it frequently.
"Unexpected Joy" for two tiples is easygoing and mellow and seems to refer back to motifs in the opening piece.
"Waiting for the Nightingale" is the centrepiece and the first of two pieces where winds and strings are combined, although the Cambodian flutes are rather in the background. There’s something quite stately and reverential about it, particularly with the choir of voices. Maybe one could think of it as a hymn to nature. “I have this image of being in the garden in springtime and waiting for the nightingale to sing. Just for two moments the flutes come to the foreground and it’s like the nightingales emerge.”
The alternating tiple and bowed pieces continue with four more tracks. "The Silver Fan", a delicate tiple solo, nothing like you’d hear from a Colombian player, makes individual notes sparkle as in the soft light of late afternoon. The final flourish sounds like the fan is abruptly shut. "Embracing Mysteries" once again features the deep, cello-like sounds of the dilruba, this time accompanied by the sapeh of Borneo. The sapeh is usually plucked but Stephan constructed a new kind of bridge which enables the instrument to be played with a bow. Then his voice enters in a kind of dialogue with the dilruba. "To the Lilies in the Fields" has, once again, two tiples, now rather more meditative in a kind of lament. In the penultimate track, "The Flame", the bowed instruments evoke something like the sanctity of a romanesque church full of candles. Here Stephan also uses tableharps, a contemporary instrument that he last played on his 1978 album Till the End of Time. “It’s had a 46-year break, but I found the combination with the sattar particularly satisfying as both instruments have metal strings.”
It’s only in the final track, "To the Rising Moon", that the two worlds of the plucked tiples and bowed strings finally come together. It’s like a hymn to something that is eternally up there in the night sky, something consistent while there is so much turbulence in the world below.
Stephan Micus’ last album Thunder paid tribute to thunder gods around the world and featured as its headline instrument the mighty, four-metre long Tibetan dung chen trumpet. The contrast between the cosmic blast of that album and the delicate intimacy of the plucked and bowed strings of this one makes it clear why Micus has produced such a wide range of music over nearly 50 years.
