Event

Jozef van Wissem with The Improvisational String Quartet and Selbyville

Saturday 10.17.2009, Doors at 7:30 PM, Starts at 8:00 PM, $8, All Ages

Composer-lute player Jozef van Wissem is renowned for his unusual approach of the renaissance and baroque lute. He cuts and pastes classical pieces, reverses melodies, adds electronics and processed field recordings made at airport lounges and train stations, accomplishing the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century composition. van Wissem runs the Incunabulum record label, and performs extensively around the world working with Tetuzi Akiyama, Maurizio Bianchi and James Blackshaw. His solo cd entitled "it is all that is made" was released by Important records in March 2009. He's joined by Portland's own Improvisational String Quartet, featuring members of the Portland Symphony Orchestra and Meantone's alter ego, Al Guisto. Selbyville, a new addition to the Portland scene, combines ambient electronics and compositional guitar work to finish off the night.

"The dutch lutist jozef van wissem catches his own reflection in tender, minimalist picking and gold-spray overdubs.- - rolling stone magazine

"hypnotic minimalist figures seem to breeze across musical boundaries with effortless fluency" _pitchfork

Jozef van Wissem has been slowly reinventing the lute for the last three decades. Among the slew of fast-picking, fancy-fretting guitar players so prevalent today, his lutes voice is a quiet oasis, and Stations of the Cross a small masterpiece. the wire