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Stian Westerhus

Stian Westerhus is a Norwegian, multiple award-winning, experimental guitarist who has released a slew of critically acclaimed albums on Rune Grammofon, the last as Stian Westerhus & the Pale Horses in 2014. He returns this year with an album of heavy abstract and, quite frankly, stunning beauty for House of Mythology.

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16
Jazz Poetry

Birds with Long Red Tails

Read "Birds with Long Red Tails" reviewed 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 ...

7
Album Review

Stian Westerhus: The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers

Read "The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers" reviewed 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 ...

19
Interview

Stian Westerhus: The Existential Dimension of Music

Read "Stian Westerhus: The Existential Dimension of Music" reviewed 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 ...

361
Album Review

Stian Westerhus: Pitch Black Star Spangled

Read "Pitch Black Star Spangled" reviewed 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 ...

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1

Award / Grant

Farmers Market and Sidsel Endresen & Stian Westerhus Win Norwegian Grammy Awards

Farmers 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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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Didymoi dreams

Rune Grammofon
2013

buy

The Matriarch And The...

Rune Grammofon
2012

buy

Baboon Moon

Sula Records
2012

buy

Pitch Black Star...

Rune Grammofon
2010

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