While searching for a sound that connects archaic-ethnic music styles with baroque and other early music, in 2012 Supersonus – The European Resonance Ensemble began to form itself, involving the instruments Nyckelharpa, Jew’s harp, Harpsichord/Piano, Kannel, percussion and overtone singing.
Supersonus – The European Resonance Ensemble, with the sequence of tunes played a continuous flow of music based on baroque sensitivities and what we used to call “experimental” or “extended technique” sounds. Bavarian singer and multi-instrmentalist Anna-Maria Hefele has built an individual technique of polyphonic overtone singing. Eva-Maria Rusche is a fine harpsichordist. Marco Ambrosini plays what the Germans call a Schlüsselfiedel (and the Swedes a nyckelharpa), Wolf Janscha plays “jaw harp”. Normal band member Anna-Liisa Eller plucks the Estonian kannel but had to be replaced at 24 hours’ notice. This band has an ECM recording imminent, and the word will get out quickly now. The INNtöne audience savoured this group’s intensely quiet sound world and stayed still.
By using this unique combination of different styles, instruments and musical expressions they bring the listener in touch with an intensely rich total sound inviting to an imaginative journey: There are visions from heaven-like expanse, the ecstasy of dance and stoical calmness as well as scenes of joyful puerile playing, or dark, epic shadow theatre. In your mind’s eye you can find baroque pleasure gardens to promenade in, as well as barren mountain tops from where you can observe the world in its inherent natural beauty
Contrasts, dissimilarities and musical extremes are not perceived as a conflict in Supersonus, but experienced and expressed as a deeply underlying power of their music. They see themselves as bridge-builders, from a cultural and also from a musical point of view. The unexpected and the unheard lie at the far edge of the musical architecture they strive to create. Thence and back again, like a pendulum, they call to life their creativity and muse.
