Echo Stane is a solo Hardanger‑fiddle record by Scottish fiddler Sarah‑Jane Summers, who is based in Norway. The album is listed on the Another Timbre label (cat. no. at211) and is available on CD (cardboard gatefold) and digitally; Summers’s own site is here: sarah-janesummers.com.
Summers wrote the nine pieces on Echo Stane herself; the label and distributor material note that some of the pieces evolved from studio improvisations that she later notated. She has described entering the sessions with no fixed plan and with an intent to probe the Hardanger’s sympathetic resonance and to find expressive textures that sit between Scottish and Norwegian folk practice, contemporary composition and experimental approaches.
Where it was made
The record was tracked at Ugla Lyd, Nesodden, Norway, on 28 and 29 June 2022 and was recorded and engineered by Juhani Silvola. Silvola, a Finnish guitarist and long‑term collaborator who is also Summers’s husband, is credited on the session; label and retailer listings repeat those production details.
The pieces
There are nine solo pieces, each credited to Summers. Retail listings provide the track titles and timings as follows:
- Airtan — 7:22
- Shadow Half — 4:24
- The Feeding Storm — 4:57
- Upsun — 5:59
- Mirrie Dancers — 3:17
- Echo Stance — 5:25
- Mirk Monanday — 4:52
- The King's Weather — 4:37
- Eftergang — 4:24
Summers has said that the names — including the album title — come from Scots nature and weather vocabulary; she cites Amanda Thomson’s A Scots Dictionary of Nature as a source for those terms. The titles act as short prompts rather than literal programme notes.
Context
Summers is originally from Inverness and has lived in Norway since 2010. Her background includes a Master’s degree in Norwegian traditional music and improvisation from the Norwegian Academy of Music. She works across folk, improvised and experimental fields; other reviews and features have noted this cross‑disciplinary practice, and several outlets have written about Echo Stane specifically.
Another Timbre’s catalogue places Echo Stane within the label’s interest in exploratory acoustic work and solo instrumental records. Distributor and retailer pages confirm the album’s catalogue number and formats, and they carry the session details cited above.
What others have said
Echo Stane has been discussed in outlets that cover contemporary folk, improvised and experimental music: Bandcamp Daily included the record in a guide to Hardanger‑fiddle albums, and further writeups or reviews appear in The Free Jazz Collective and Point of Departure’s "Moment’s Notice" column. The Strad has also commented favourably on Summers’s playing in other contexts. These pieces form part of the public reception surrounding the release.
For listeners who want the record’s basic facts: Echo Stane was released in 2023 on Another Timbre (at211), contains nine solo Hardanger pieces written by Summers, and was recorded at Ugla Lyd with Juhani Silvola as recording engineer. Copies and digital purchases are listed through several specialist distributors and the label’s channels.
Summers’s own framing — of the work as studio‑shaped improvisation and as an attempt to draw the Hardanger’s folk voice into more abstract, timbral territory — is the clearest guide to what the record sets out to do. The record places Scottish word‑pictures next to a fiddle tradition that carries a long echo into Norway; Echo Stane is an exploration of those echoes, presented one instrument at a time.