JOZEF VAN WISSEM AT ETHNO JAZZ FESTIVAL

9 MAY 2018

Jozef van Wissem is American director Jim Jarmusch's favourite composer and created the music for “Only Lovers Left Alive”, winning an award at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2013. A constantly touring instrumentalist, he studied lute in New York with Patrick O'Brien.

To enter and understand the artist’s world, one must surrender to the peculiar, strange music that, he says, he creates in complete accord with himself. He draws listeners into his private world while watching from the sidelines. Concision, simplicity and directness are the keys to understanding. Van Wissem is “both an avant-garde composer and a baroque lutenist” (New York Times). He has given more than 800 solo lute concerts in churches and clubs worldwide, including prestigious rock festivals such as ATP and Primavera Sound, playing a specially commissioned “black lute”.

In 2013, van Wissem won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for “Tylko kochankowie przeżyją”. He has performed and recorded with Jim Jarmusch, Tilda Swinton and Zola Jesus. In 2017, he released the live “New Lute Music For Film” (Incunabulum). London’s National Gallery commissioned a “soundtrack” for Hans Holbein’s “Ambasadorowie”. In December 2017, at the Hermitage, he “played” to Caravaggio’s famous 1596 “Lutnista”.

His latest album, “Nobody living can ever make me turn' back”, is inspired by a contemporary “Vanitas” painting featured on the cover.