Stefan Schönegg

Marlies Debacker – Piano
Stefan Schönegg – Double bass
Etienne Nillesen – Extended snare drum

On the withered tree a flower blooms is already the seventh release under the moniker Enso and the second featuring Marlies Debacker on piano and Etienne Nillesen on snare drum. The approximately 45-minute piece is drone music, a slow, subtle layering of meandering textures. While the previous album, A Simplified Space, focused primarily on silence and the spontaneous expression of the moment, On the withered tree a flower blooms invites the listener to immerse themselves in the moment in a completely different way: through the finest rhythmic and harmonic branching, the music develops an immediate pull into its pure essence – sound.

Marlies Debacker – Piano
Stefan Schönegg – Double bass
Etienne Nillesen – Extended snare drum

„This is ritual music, conceived from its origins. For in the beginning, the goddess of music first created silence and tranquillity. Before she introduced material that, as here, only has a function in itself and is only placed in relation to itself in this autonomy of sound by the listeners themselves. How difficult is it to allow freedom? And how beautiful when it succeeds so impressively, as here.“
Martin Hufner, nmz hörbar

Kari Rønnekleiv – Violin
Judith Hamann – Cello
Stefan Schönegg – Double bass
Etienne Nillesen – Extended snare drum
Toma Gouband – Lithophone

„A music of patience, a music of kindness. A music that is to be understood as a great invitation to the hearing organ and its nerve cells that process these signals. […] It begins with little, it ends with little, it remains much. […] We hear music here that is focused solely on what is acoustic art about it. As if by the law of gravity, it constantly brings the listener back into its sound-noise spell.“
Martin Hufner, nmz hörbar

„The focus of Stefan Schönegg’s formation Enso is sound. And there is nothing to shake about that. Already the four previous releases of the quartet – which optionally even grows to an octet – testify to the tireless, as it were precise urge to get on the track of the sound and its production. […] Enso’s music is and has always been there. […] On the foil of suspended time, the ear loses itself in an infinite landscape. Rarely has resolution been more beautiful.“
Gerardo Scheige, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

„Strings & Percussion is the latest project of Cologne bassist, composer and label producer Stefan Schönegg in his Enso series, with which, album after album, he plays himself free of jazz and improvisation clichés, but also refrains from any ingratiation with new music standards. An exercise in autonomy. If you ask around in the local jazz scene about originality, independence and persistence, you will always hear Schönegg’s name.
Strings & Percussion is exactly that: three string players, two percussionists, who, without any vanity, circle themes and ideas collectively and to the point of sonic indistinguishability, perhaps formulating an idea or not, letting the sounds swell but never overflow.“
Felix Klopotek, Stadtrevue

Michael Thieke – Clarinet
Sandra Weiss – Bassoon
Nathan Bontrager – Cello
Stefan Schönegg – Double bass
Etienne Nillesen – Extended snare drum

„Music can be such a beautiful thing when it offers space to all those who allow themselves time and peace to listen; without fear, without suspicion, without any violence, rich in the reduced. The music of becoming and emerging from little – and therefore as free as hardly anything else.“
Martin Hufner, nmz hörbar

„[…] a recording of liberating no-bullshit attitude. Strukturen is marked by clarity and simplicity from the first minute, played with such precision […] that every sound detail is audible and every sound is at the same time melted into the overall process.“
Felix Klopotek, Stadtrevue

„Unintrusively captivating.“
Joseph Neff, The Vinyl District

Miako Klein – Recorder
Leonhard Huhn – Saxophone, clarinet
Elena Kakaliagou – French horn
Nora Krahl – Cello
Nathan Bontrager – Viola da Gamba
Stefan Schönegg – Double bass
Etienne Nillesen – Extended snare drum
Rie Watanabe – Bass drum

„The gentle call to mindfulness inherent in this music is marked by intensity and a friendly seriousness, and doesn’t come with domineering eventfulness, but with a series of suggestions for figures of thought and modes of perception.“
Hans-Jürgen Linke, Frankfurter Rundschau

„BIG Enso, like its predecessor, is a highly creative album that thrives above all on the musical sensitivity of the musicians.“
freistil magazin

„Enso’s music demands the utmost concentration, and it rewards richly.“
Felix Klopotek, Stadtrevue

Leonhard Huhn – Saxophone
Nathan Bontrager – Cello
Stefan Schönegg – Double bass
Etienne Nillesen – Extended snare drum

„[…] soothing islands for ear, head and heart.“
Steff Rohrbach, Jazz’n’more

„The depth, the great expanse suggested by this music, even its rare conventionally harmonic moments are potentiated by Schönegg’s structuralist approach. Sublime presence sets in, as if the musicians were surrounding oneself, communicating blindly with each other.“
Felix Klopotek, Stadtrevue

„Schönegg’s music shows itself to be equal to the great themes it shapes – not out of compositional geniusness, but out of an idea of music that assigns the fellow musicians an enormously significant share in the success of the overall process and at the same time shows a great respect for silence that heightens attention. Ultimately, it is the four playing individuals and their coordinating sound strategies that give shape to the theme of the zyklus and prevent it from slipping into pathos gestures.“
Hans-Jürgen Linke, Frankfurter Rundschau

Leonhard Huhn – Saxophone, clarinet
Nathan Bontrager – Cello
Stefan Schönegg – Double bass
Etienne Nillesen – Extended snare drum

„It’s an intriguing collection from a talented musician of whom we should be aware in the future.“
Martin Schray, freejazzblog

„Some of what makes up the inner tension of this music consists of what is not played, but what is played unfolds a richness like a Japanese garden that successfully pretends to be a complete landscape.“
Hans-Jürgen Linke, Jazzthetik

„Reduction never seems manneristic, but radiates a naturalness that always serves the musical result. Naturalness that always serves the naturalness. In spite of this reduction, or perhaps because of it the sound ideas of the four instrumentalists can unfold ideally.“
Gerardo Scheige, Musiktexte