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Renowned for his avant-garde jazz experiments and progressive rock fusions, Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal's ambient, orchestral, brooding sound captures the dramatic beauty and darkness of the landscape of his homeland which has been pushing new sonic boundaries since the 1960s. The son of a composer and band leader, he grew up near the rocky coastal town of Molde and was set for a career as a classical pianist until the birth of rock and roll led him to take up the guitar as a teenager and start out playing in twangy, Hank Marvin-style pop licks with his group The Vanguards. The emergence of Jimi Hendrix had a huge influence on Rypdal and he released one album with psychedelic rock outfit The Dream in 1968, before learning more about jazz by listening to John Coltrane's 'Meditations' and playing with saxophonist Jan Garbarek's band The Esoteric Circle. He went on to study music at the Oslo Conservatory and play with George Russell's free-jazz sextet, before becoming one of the first acts signed to the influential label ECM. Using stacks of effects pedals to make his guitar wail and sing, Rypdal's double album 'Odyssey' was hailed as monumental jazz-rock epic in 1975, whilst 'Waves' was equally groundbreaking in its wirey weirdness and 'After the Rain' conjured a hushed, intimate swell and featured his wife, the singer Inger Lise Rypdal. He also composed classical pieces such as 'Eternal Circulation' which was performed by the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and sought to combine his jazz-rock grooves and glacial, orchestral moods together on 1995's 'If Mountains Could Sing'. Continuing to be a creative well of lush, haunting, shape-shifting sounds, he went on to collaborate regularly with guitar whizz Roni Le Tekro and pianist Ketil Bjornstad and his tracks 'Last Nite' and 'Mystery Man' were used in the hit Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino movie 'Heat' in 1995. More recently he teamed up with conductor Dennis Russell Davies and the vocal group Hilliard Ensemble on the choral, orchestral work 'Melodic Warrior' in 2013, on which he used poems written by Native American Indians and created dense, rumbling sonics alongside his trademark soaring electric guitar licks.
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