June 2024. A memorable evening at the Mediencampus Villa Ida in Leipzig. Gisela Horat, Simon Iten, and Samuel Büttiker. The exploration of the spaces where noise becomes sound. A world of exuberant, deafening noise is set against silence. They push the envelope of what is bearable, to the moment when the heart nearly leaps in anticipation of the next sound. Silence as a creative principle of music that doesn’t call for strobe lights and artificial stage fog! Music that tells touching and stirring stories, stories that come from silence in these raucous times and from the heart. This inspiring tension that becomes energy and dissolves with the first note, to which a second joins, and then a third, thoughtfully and intuitively, gradually crystallising into form and rhythm to become sound. This sound can be ear-splittingly harmonious and hauntingly dissonant. It can drift rhythmically like an autumn storm or float balladically like a spring breeze. Or all at once, one after the other, and intertwined. The audience derives pleasure from the effort of attentive listening. Which can sometimes lead to, as happened at this concert, a bewildered visitor saying to another: “I hope she hasn’t fallen asleep” NOOO! We must relearn to hear and endure silence, to navigate it, and to listen and surrender to its stories, - in this case, to the stories of this outstanding trio. – Thomas Brückner