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Stian Westerhus
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Birds with Long Red Tails
by Adriana Carcu
[Written during guitarist Stian Westerhus' solo show, June 4, 2012 at Green Hours Jazz Fest, Bucharest.]I see things, scary things,wars and ghosts,planes and meadows.I hear my pulse and the bloodrushing through my veins,I see an old clock on a marble mantelpieceand I see the time falling apartin seconds I have already forgotten.The city traffic stops at the crossroadsto listen to ...
read moreStian Westerhus: The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers
by John Kelman
Beyond his reputation as Norway's hardest working guitarist"--an éclat supported by, amongst many others, ongoing membership in Nils Petter Molvær's trio and assuming the producer's role for the trumpeter's Baboon Moon (Sula, 2011); collaborating with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra for Ripples, raptures and disbelief (a Molde Jazz Festival commission screaming for release); and, with Didymoi Dreams (Rune Grammofon, 2012), righting a wrong with the first recorded document of his duo with another fearless innovator, singer Sidsel Endresen--Stian Westerhus has managed ...
read moreStian Westerhus: The Existential Dimension of Music
by Adriana Carcu
Guitarist Stian Westerhus holds a singular position in the Nordic musical landscape. His involvement with bands like Puma and Monolithic--as well as his projects together with trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer and drummer Erlend Dahlen, and vocalist Sidsel Endresen--are a prolongation of his solo performances, which impress through a tremendous output of musical energy. His guitar voice, of superb roughness and exquisite inner pacing, goes beyond genre boundaries to address the existential dimension of musical perception. The immediacy of the sound ...
read moreStian Westerhus: Pitch Black Star Spangled
by John Kelman
With advances in technology allowing musicians to turn real-time solo performances into works of near-orchestral expansiveness, the concept of a solo guitar album has become something much different than when guitarists like Lenny Breau turned the instrument on its side with Five O'Clock Bells (Genes, 1977), deceptively sounding like the work of two guitarists with no overdubbing, no effects. There's little in the canon of solo guitar--with the possible exception of Derek Bailey and Fred Frith--that can prepare or set ...
read moreFarmers Market and Sidsel Endresen & Stian Westerhus Win Norwegian Grammy Awards
Source:
All About Jazz
Saturday evening at Vossa Jazz was an even greater cause for celebration than the performances to that point and still to come. Two of the festival's artists received news that they had been awarded Norwegian Grammy Awards: Multi-instrumentalist Stian Carstensen (accordion, guitar, pedal steel guitar, Kaval, banjo) and his longstanding group Farmers Market won in the Open Category for the group's 2012 release, Slav to the Rhythm (Division Records). Carstensen was at Vossa Jazz unveiling a new commission that, in ...
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