30 years of music recordings by Stefan Winter

30 years ago Stefan Winter recorded his debut production for JMT (Jazz Music Today). The early works were exactly at the transition point from analogue to digital recording techniques. Without digital technology the AudioFilms such as 'Orient-Express', 'Metropolis Shanghai' and 'Wagner e Venezia' would have been unthinkable. Besides these AudioFilms, Stefan Winter developed artist editions with Teodoro Anzellotti, Theo Bleckmann, Uri Caine, Mauricio Kagel, Paul Motian (1988-2011), Ernst Reijseger and Fumio Yasuda to name only few. Kagel and Motian, two artists from entirely different worlds, inspired Winter again and again to dare new things.

At the end of the 80s, Stefan Winter and Mariko Takahashi met in Japan. Under the direction of Mariko Takahashi the festival Taboo-Lu was initiated in Ginza in Tokyo, a notable presentation with live concerts, an art exhibition and recordings, and with that the idea of and for Winter&Winter was sown. Since the mid '90s Mariko and Stefan have managed and directed Winter&Winter together and Stefan continues to produce sound installations and 'sound art objects'.

'The Rest is Silence' is one of 10 extraordinary editions for Winter+Winter's 30th Jubilee and is a collection of the contemporary Classical composers the label has supported since day one, and also the artists that are the mainstay of all their productions. For the future one can trust the unpredictability of Winter&Winter. Here's to them...

"Ten years ago Mariko Takahashi and I recorded in the Mexican countryside, in between hens, pigs and cows the folk-tunes of a simple, peasant family. To introduce ourselves we gave the farmer the recording »Tantz-Schul« of Mauricio Kagel. The next morning he talked enthusiastically about the music, sounds he had never heard before. He did not sleep all night as he could not stop listening again and again." Music of our time is often said to be solely intellectual, inharmonious and inaudible ... Composers like Abrahamsen, Berio, Gervasoni, Kagel, Sciarrino, Pärt and Yasuda are a source of musical abundance. The album »The Rest is Silence« offers the opportunity to get acquainted with music around the turn of the millenium. Mauricio Kagel, famous for his visionary sounds, condenses the atmosphere of our times in an enjoyable and sometimes satirical way. A form of Neo-Romanticism is the keyword for Fumio Yasuda's work, and Hans Abrahamsen is counted among the representatives of the New Simplicity. This album is not made for specialists of new music, it is the invitation to overcome the fear of the unknown." - Stefan Winter