GHOST TRAIN – zwei spektakuläre Theaterereignisse

Ghost Train

OPEN-AIR-THEATER-SPEKTAKEL

Fotos: Terry Blackburn

Zur Feier des Jahrestags, als vor 200 Jahren der erste Passagierzug von Stockton nach Darlington in Nordostengland fuhr, fanden im September 2025 zwei große, spektakuläre Theaterereignissen in den beiden Städten statt, wobei Jane Revitt für die Kostüme verantwortlich zeichnete.

Jetzt gibt es einen 17minütigen Film auf VIMEO zu den beiden monumentalen Open-Air-Spektakeln. 

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the first passenger train running from Stockton to Darlington in northeast England, two large, spectacular theatrical events took place in the two cities in September 2025, with costumes designed by Jane Revitt.

A 17-minute film about these two monumental open-air spectacles is now available on Vimeo.

Ghost Train: The Making of a Spectaclevimeo.com

Eric Mandel in JAZZTHING: Freak-Sounds review

 

Das Akkordeon – Instrument des Jahres 2026

Das Akkordeon – Instrument des Jahres 2026

Ein Artikel aus der WELT am SONNTAG, 30. November 2025

Mehr zum Thema:                                                                                    

VON ABBA BIS ZAPPA: 5. POPtalk & Music

Als die Rockmusik nach Sindelfingen und Böblingen kam

Die lokale Szene – ein voller Erfolg 

Foto: C.Wagner 

Gestern fand der 5. POPtalk & Music diesmal im alternativen Kulturzentrum 'Pavillon' in Sindelfingen statt zur Begleitung meiner Buchveröffentlichung: ‘Von Abba bis Zappa – Als Sindelfingen und Böblingen den Südwesten rockten’ (Verlag Regionalkultur). Und wieder: übervoller Saal, tolle Stimmung und allgemeine Begeisterung. Das Thema triggert Erinnerungen, besonders, wenn es wie gestern Abend, um die lokale Szene geht. So viele ehemalige und noch aktive Rockmusiker waren in Sindelfingen wohl noch nie auf einem Haufen zu finden gewesen. Der Spruch: "Ja, di han I ja scho 50 Jahr nemme gsehn" war mehrmals zu hören. Hochinteressante Round-Table-Gespräche, eindringliche Musik von Joachim Kupke (Gesang) und Reiner Pfleiderer (Gitarre), dazu eine Mulitmedia-Präsentation der atemberaubenden Autogramm-Alben von Andreas Henkel machten den Abend zu einer runden Sache.

Jetzt ist erstmal Winterpause. Die 2. Staffel startet dann am Samstag, 14. März mit der Eröffnung der POP-Ausstellung im Sindelfinger Stadtmuseum, einer weiteren Begleitveranstaltung unter dem Motto ‘Ich war dabei!’ und zwei Konzerten zu Ehren von Miles Davis, der 2026 hundert Jahre alt geworden wäre und zweimal in Sindelfingen und Böblingen auftrat: 1964 und 1971.  

Foto: Joachim Schneider

FREAK-SOUNDS Buchbesprechung in: Donauquelle / Schwarzwälder Bote

 Donauquelle / Schwarzwälder Bote  22.11.2025

Im DEUTSCHEN HARMONIKA-MUSEUM in TROSSINGEN (www.https://harmonika-museum.de) sind auch Melodicas und ein Clavinet ausgestellt, kein normales Instrument, sondern das Clavinet der Schwoba-Rock-Gruppe Schwoißfuaß. 
 

Scheibengericht Nr. 49: Frith / Portugal

Fred Frith / Mariá Portugal

Matter

Intakt Records

Er ist der Altmeister des experimentellen Gitarrenspiels, sie eine jüngere Schlagzeugerin, die sich gerade auf der europäischen Improvisationszene einen Namen macht. Im Juni 2023 haben sich Fred Frith und Mariá Portugal im Loft in Köln getroffen, um ein Album einzuspielen, das vier längere Titel enthält, die alle dem Prinzip der reaktiven freien Improvisation folgen. Das bedeutet: Ein Beteiligter reagiert auf die Impulse des anderen, um sich so im improvisatorischen Ping-Pong die Bälle zuzuspielen. Das hat zur Folge, dass viel passiert und die Klangtexturen sich laufend verändern. 

Sowohl Frith als auch Portugal packen ihren Werkzeugkasten aus und entnehmen ihm Töne, Klänge und Geräusche, die im raschen Wechsel auseinander hervorgehen. Da ist viel Schaben, Kratzen und Rascheln, Klicken und Klacken im Spiel, was an die Frühphase der freien Musik in Europa erinnert. Dann bringt Portugal mit ein paar versonnenen Vokalmelodien ein bisschen Flair ihrer brasilianischen Heimat ins Spiel, während Frith auf der Slidegitarre eine Sequenz Bluestöne anschlägt oder mit einer Gesangseinlage, von der Gitarre unterlegt, Blind Willie Johnson paraphrasiert. Die Klanglandschaften ziehen im Sauseschritt vorbei. Man hätte sich gewünscht, dass die beiden etwas bedächtiger zur Sache gegangen wären, um die geglücktesten Momente intensiver auszuloten.

Hörprobe:

https://fred-frith.bandcamp.com/album/matter

MIKE ADCOCK on stone instruments

Ein Gastbeitrag von Mike Adcock:

Rock Music

Music made by stones 

Páll Gudmundsson, Iceland 

My recently published book, Music Stones – The rediscovery of ringing rock, describes a

series of fresh attempts, in relatively recent times, to explore the sound potential of stone.

But the musical use of stone goes back a long way. In its earliest forms, music is likely to

have been produced using a range of available materials, such as wood, bone, reeds and

grasses, but stone was almost certainly used too. In general, this meant using stone which

rang with an attractive sound when struck and sometimes it would have been tooled to

produce different notes. In different parts of the world, slabs of such rock have been

discovered showing tool markings suggesting they had been struck for no apparent

purpose other than to produce sound.

Playing on stone was to continue in different cultures around the world, but over the

course of the last century in particular the practice has all but disappeared. However, in

1949, in Vietnam, an ancient set of eleven apparently tuned stones was unearthed,

leading to other similar discoveries in the country. This was to result in something of a

revival of interest in the construction and playing of stone instruments, with Vietnam has

becoming the country most widely associated with musical stone.

Music Stones, which has a foreword written by percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie,

begins its story in the town of Keswick, in England's Lake District, when an eccentric

museum curator called Peter Crosthwaite collected, in 1785, sixteen slabs of local

hornfels rock, which he assembled into what he called his “music stones”, at a time when

similarly styled tuned percussion instruments were virtually unknown in Britain. Almost

half a century later, inspired by Crosthwaite's instrument which was housed in his

museum, a series of so-called family rock bands from Keswick enjoyed varying degrees of

success playing larger stone instruments and were able to capitalise on a growing appetite

for novelty in entertainment. Joseph Richardson, a stonemason by trade, led the way,

building a five-octave instrument which he completed in 1840 and which is still to be seen

and played in Keswick Museum. Like Crosthwaite, he painstakingly tuned the stone slabs

using the skills he had learnt for his trade. The Richardsons' “Original Rock Band”, as they

sometimes referred to it, played well over a thousand concerts over a twelve year period,

even being called upon to perform for Queen Victoria and other dignitaries at Buckingham

Palace.

Joseph Richardson's Rock Harmonicon, Keswick, England (photo: Mike Adcock)

In the second half of the nineteenth century the playing of stone became more

commonplace. Other family bands from Keswick continued to perform around Britain on

large instruments which became known as “rock harmonicons” and in the increasingly

popular music halls, in London and other provincial towns, performers combined the

playing of musical stones with other skills, including juggling and acrobatics.

In the twentieth century there was not such a widespread use of stone instruments, but it

continued to feature, taking different forms, and I devote a chapter in the book to different

ways in which it was manifested. Composer Carl Orff commissioned the design and

construction of a lithophone for his choral work Antigonae, which had its premiere in 1949.

Assisting Orff with this instrument, which he called a steinspiel, was a young engineer

called Klaus Becker-Ehmck and form him this began a career designing and

manufacturing percussion instruments. The company he founded, still operating today,

took its name from the year it was established, Studio 49. A few years later, in 1956

another engineer in the USA, Leland Sprinkle, finished building what remains officially the

world's largest musical instrument, the Great Stalacpipe Organ. Not a pipe organ at all, it

employs an organ console to trigger the playing of a range of amplified stalactites in the

Luray Caverns in Virginia. Later a number of musicians and composers adopting

experimental approaches in their work, including Christian Wolff, Cornelius Cardew and

Pauline Oliveros, were to chose to use stone in their compositions.

Music Stones, while considering innovatory approaches to music-making with stone in

recent times, does not ignore the fact that there were undoubtedly much earlier

precedents for this. The 1949 discovery in Vietnam opened up an awareness of early

forms of music-making and I have devoted a chapter to Vietnam in particular, not because

of the discovery of the ancient stone slabs per se, but because of the way it led to a

resurgence of interest in lithophones in Vietnam and their relatively widespread use in

performance, becoming something of a tourist attraction. In writing about this I also raise

issues around the revival, partly in relation to the western influences which pervades it, but

also concerning the appropriation by the dominant Vietnamese culture of a tradition whose

history lies with people from the minorities.

Nguyen Minh Nghiep, Vietnam (photo: Thuy Van Nguyen)

I have also included in the book a chapter on the connections between sculpture,

particularly stone-carving, and music. Sometimes, as in the case of Sardinian sculptor

Pinuccio Sciola, this came through the production of sound sculptures. By making cuts

into the stone, Sciola was able to draw different qualities of sound from his sculptures,

either by striking with beaters or by friction, as in a glass harmonica. Earlier, the sculptor

Barbara Hepworth, while conscious of the place of sound in the stone-carving process,

was also aware of the rhythmic aspects of that process. British musician Will Menter, from

improvising with the sound of stone and other natural materials, went on to develop these

elements into sculptural pieces in their own right.

Pinuccio Sciola caressing a basalt sculpture (photo: Luca Pinna)

The last chapter of the book is made up of a series of statements from contemporary 

instrument-builders, musicians and composers from twelve different countries who I

invited to contribute, telling of their particular involvement with sonorous stone. These

include a Vietnamese stone instrument-builder, Nghiep Minh Nguyen, American composer

Christian Wolff and Icelandic instrument-builder and musician Páll Gudmundsson, who

worked with the band Sigur Rós in their use of local volcanic rock in their music. The

rediscovery of ringing rock continues.

More information:

https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781805830146

Teasers on youtube: