artists
Stefan Schönegg
Calm and cautious: establishing his own time structure through music.
His gaze turns to the wind-blown leaves, his hand touches the tall ferns by chance and still in a directed manner: this is the contemplative appearance of bassist, improviser and composer Stefan Schönegg as the protagonist in the music video for “Strukturen” (Structures), by his Enso ensemble, for which the musician, born 1987 in Heppenheim, Hessen, composes minimalist chamber music with a focus on improvisation. Schönegg lives in Cologne since 2010 and locates his work in the fields of jazz, new and improvised music.
Stefan Schönegg studied classical double bass and jazz double bass in Berlin and Cologne. He is Founding member of the musicians’ collective impakt (Improvisation & Contemporary Music Cologne), which has been promoting improvised music in the city on the Rhine since 2013. Schönegg also runs the impakt Records label, which has been causing a stir in the avant-garde music scene since its relaunch at the end of 2019. The Kölner Stadtrevue noted: “If you ask for originality, independence and perseverance in the local jazz scene, the name Schönegg comes up again and again.”
In addition to his diverse work as an improviser, ensemble player and sideman, Schönegg launched his aforementioned project Enso in 2016, for which he composes minimal music for various instrumentations. Enso has released three CDs and two LPs so far, all of which have been well received by the press. A sixth Enso recording will be released at the end of 2023: a new iteration with piano, double bass and percussion, recorded in a four-day Deutschlandfunk production in April this year.