After their previous album 25 years KontraSax & Friends. Live (JHM 240), Serpents & Stones is now the fifth KontraSax production and at the same time the document of the duo's 35th stage anniversary. Christina Fuchs and Romy Herzberg’s long “running time” is a very considerable length for a project by two musicians. Exceptions, such as the collaboration of musicians like Dave Liebman and Richie Beirach, only confirm the rule of the rather short half-life of a band's career. Fuchs and Herzberg have spent these three and a half decades together in the rehearsal room, on concert stages, on tours, in theater and literary projects and in the radio studio, and have had all the usual discussions and struggles over artistic decisions, which usually lead to the end of most projects in the pop or jazz sector. But Christina Fuchs and Romy Herzberg seem to have a secret recipe within their KontraSax project, keeping both their energy and their creative potential fresh.

The clear proof of this were the anniversary concerts on which this recording is based. Serpents & Stones was made in Cologne's O-Ton Studio, and once again they followed the plan of allowing Fuchs and Herzberg to react with free improvisation to structures and genres from other players. The intensity of this musical-chemical reaction - including Fuchs' and Herzberg's guests, the Munich accordionist Florian Stadler and pianist Georg Ruby from Cologne - is, in its extraordinary richness of color, one of the most remarkable things that the world of improvised music currently has to offer us. Congratulations, KontraSax!