Michael Gulezian is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
composer and Fingerstyle guitarist. He is noted for dramatic compositions, a penchant for manipulating metre, an affinity for open tunings, and an unconventionally free two-handed technical approach. Gulezian's use of
bottleneckA bottleneck is a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or limited number of components or resources. The term bottleneck is taken from the 'assets are water' metaphor. As water is poured out of a bottle, the rate of outflow is limited by the width...
slide on 12-string guitar, coupled with his command of reverse analog reverbs have made his recordings notable for their dream-like sonic atmosphere. Gulezian inhabits a musical territory between his mentor
John FaheyJohn Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
, and his friend and colleague
Michael HedgesMichael Alden Hedges was an American composer, Acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter.-Background:...
.
Biography
Gulezian began playing acoustic guitar at the age of six; although he never took formal lessons, he underwent years of self-imposed classical guitar training. He was influenced by his mother, who sang
ArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
n folk songs, and his father, classical Middle-Eastern
oudThe oud is a pear-shaped stringed instrument commonly used in North African and Middle Eastern music. The modern oud and the European lute both descend from a common ancestor via diverging paths...
virtuoso and Pharonic Egyptian ethnomusicologist H. Aram Gulezyan. Michael immersed himself in his
ArmenianArmenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
cultural heritage,
Middle Eastern musicThe music of Western Asia and North Africa spans across a vast region, from Morocco to Afghanistan, and its influences can be felt even further afield. Middle Eastern music influenced the music of India, as well as Central Asia, Spain, Southern Italy, the Caucasus and the Balkans, as in chalga...
, non-Western
IndianThe music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, popular, pop, classical music and R&B. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and developed over several eras. It remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as...
and Chinese music, improvisational
rāgaA raga is one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music.It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made...
s, as well as Western idioms such as
Gregorian chantGregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
s, rock,
JazzJazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and
folkFolk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
.
,, In 1965 the family moved from the New York City area to Tucson, Arizona.
As a young guitarist he was influenced by the early Mississippi Delta fingerstyle guitarists:
John HurtJohn Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...
,
Bukka WhiteBooker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
,
Son HouseEddie James "Son" House, Jr. was an American blues singer and guitarist. House pioneered an innovative style featuring strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual music...
, and Robert Johnson, as well as their contemporaries from the Atlantic seaboard,
Blind Blake "Blind" Blake was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist.-Biography:...
and
Reverend Gary DavisReverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, was an American blues and gospel singer and guitarist, who was also proficient on the banjo and harmonica...
. Later he discovered and explored the music of
John FaheyJohn Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the...
and
Leo KottkeLeo Kottke is an acoustic guitarist. He is widely known for his innovative fingerpicking style, which draws on influences from blues, jazz, and folk music, and his syncopated, polyphonic melodies...
, and further broadened his musical horizons by listening to
Keith JarrettKeith Jarrett is an American pianist and composer who performs both jazz and classical music.Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music; as...
,
John McLaughlinJohn McLaughlin , also known as Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, is an English guitarist, bandleader and composer...
,
Ravi ShankarRavi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
and
Sun RaSun Ra was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama...
.
While attending Colorado’s Holy Cross Abbey, Gulezian studied
Joseph CampbellJoseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
,
Carl JungCarl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, and
James JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, who became a significant influence on his perception of language, music, linear time, Roman
CatholicismCatholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
, and temporal reality. While still in high school, Gulezian was introduced to John Fahey through
Robbie BashoRobbie Basho was an American composer, guitarist and pianist, and one of the pioneers of the acoustic steel string guitar in America.-Biography:...
. After recording his first self-published album
Snow on his own Aardvark Records imprint, Gulezian signed to John Fahey’s
Takoma RecordsTakoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
label.
Snow was re-released in 1980 (with minor modifications) to a global audience on Takoma/Chrysalis as
Unspoken Intentions. It received international critical acclaim, and established Michael as a visionary artist; musicians such as
Henry KaiserHenry Kaiser may refer to:People*Henry Felix Kaiser , American academic known for the varimax rotation*Henry J. Kaiser , American industrialist and shipbuilder who founded Kaiser Permanente...
and
Michael HedgesMichael Alden Hedges was an American composer, Acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter.-Background:...
cited
Unspoken Intentions as a major influence. In the midst of Gulezian's accelerating professional success, the Takoma label went bankrupt. Disillusioned with the music industry, Gulezian returned to college and graduated with honors, with degrees in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from the
University of ArizonaThe University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
’s Eller Center for the Study of the Private Market Economy.
Upon graduation Gulezian returned to a career in music. He founded the
Timbreline Music label, releasing his third album
Distant Memories & Dreams in 1992. He began touring again and published his fourth CD
The Dare of an Angel in 1994. In 1997 Gulezian moved to
Nashville, TennesseeNashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
. In 2002
Unspoken Intentions was reissued on CD by
Fantasy RecordsFantasy Records is a United States-based record label that was founded by Max and Sol Weiss in 1949 in San Francisco, California. They had previously operated a record-pressing plant called Circle Record Company before forming the Fantasy label...
. His fifth CD was released in 2003 - the incendiary
Language of the Flame, and followed in 2005 by the live recording
Concert at St. Olaf College.
In recent years Michael has played hundreds of concerts, and continues to present guitar workshops and master classes at colleges and universities across the USA. In addition to his live concerts, Gulezian has been featured in the USA on many radio and television broadcasts, and is regularly played on
NPRNPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
.
Discography
- Snow (1979, Aardvark Records)
- Unspoken Intentions (1980, Takoma/Fantasy)
- Distant Memories and Dreams (1992, Timbreline Music)
- The Dare Of An Angel (1996, Timbreline Music)
- Language of the Flame (2003, Timbreline Music)
- Concert at St. Olaf College (2005, Timbreline Music)
Collaborations, Compilations
- Lights Out 5 (1995, KINK FM 102)
- Lágrimas de arpa y luna (1996, Resistencia)
- Takoma Eclectic Vol. 2 (1998, Takoma Records)
- Takoma Slide (1999, Takoma Records)
- 156 Strings: Nineteen Totally Original Acoustic Guitarists (2002, Cuneiform)
- Bridges 9 (2003, Pennsylvania Public Radio Associates)
- The KUMD Sessions: Live from the Music Room #2 (2003, KUMD)
- Lights Out 9 (2004, KINK FM 102/Boyd Coffee Company)
- The Revenge of Blind Joe Death: The John Fahey Tribute Album
The Revenge of Blind Joe Death: The John Fahey Tribute Album is a tribute CD to guitarist John Fahey released in 2006 by Takoma Records.- History :...
(2006, Fantasy Records)
Books, Sheet Music
- Ian and Nisa. Individual transcription (2004, Stropes Editions)
- Between the Strings – The Secret Lives of Guitars (2004, Mel Bay Publications)
External links