Stephan Micus

Stephan Micus (born January 19, 1953) is a German classical and world musician and composer whose musical style is heavily influenced by his study of traditional instruments and musical techniques from Japan, India, South America, and other countries around the world. With the exception of his album The Music of Stones (1989), he plays all of the instruments on his recordings, combining styles from different countries and using the instruments in unprecedented ways in each of his pieces. He often uses layers of a single instrument to create unusual combinations of sounds. He is one of the only ECM Records artists whose records are not produced by Manfred Eicher. He has mixed instruments from around the world, or used whatever was at hand: stones, ordinary flowerpots tuned with water, and his voice—singing improvised syllables over ten years before others made this approach fashionable.