for trio by Ferdinand Schwarz

This album is a set of three quiet pieces for a trio of cello, piano and trumpet.

It is one of the quietest musics I have played and listened to. I envision it to be heard on high volume with closed headphones - putting one into the perspective of microscopically observing sound and silence from within the instruments.

I have always been immensely fascinated by music which allows me to be immersed in its presence. Music, which is not changing, not telling some kind of story, but is continuously being one thing, and one thing only. Music which allows emptiness and recalibration; to enter a state of pure concentration. To me this state feels healing, purifying, emptying. Somehow like a ritual.

Creating these pieces, I tried to compose such a mode of playing and listening. I used different formulas, which are logical processes of permutation that the performers perform by heart. Therefore, all development is inscribed within the idea (process) itself. I think of it as a sculpture, which the players start to reveal slowly, bit by bit through following the steps of the formula - developing stagnancy.
Scrutinizing that sculpture - spatial, seemingly rigid, stationary, to be viewed from several angles - offers to find deeper insight within the seemingly simple and known, within the music or within oneself.
I want to invite a state that breaks through our everyday perception. A music which is both of harsh clarity and overwhelming complexity, facilitating total immersion, through discovering all details within the smallest constituent parts - or through drowning in its unitary vastness.

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