Jozef Van Wissem

Jozef Van Wissem is a Dutch lutenist and composer. He adapts and improvises on music written for his instrument in the 15th century. Performing at churches, galleries, and rock festivals, he made Baroque period music accessible for 21st century rock audiences. Van Wissem has released dozens of solo albums, including 2002's Retrograde Renaissance Lute: A Classical Deconstruction, 2005's Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, and 2007's Stations of the Cross (the latter implemented field recordings). Van Wissem and director/musician Jim Jarmusch have been collaborating since recording 2012's The Mystery of Heaven and the lutenist's award-winning score to Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive in 2013. 2010s duo outings include 2019's An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil, and 2023's American Landscapes. In 2024, Van Wissem released the solo album The Night Dwells in the Day. Van Wissem's first instrument was the guitar. He studied classical music throughout his teens while becoming a fan of the emergent rock & roll sounds emanating from punk. In the '80s he was guitarist and frontman for the post-punk/new wave act Desert Corbusier and a bar owner. Eventually tiring of the rock & roll lifestyle, he sought quieter, more focused music. Remembering the transposition of the lute repertoire for guitar, he decided to learn the instrument. He sold his bar, moved to New York, and studied the lute formally with Patrick O'Brien, developing his own style of mirroring, via tablature, the canon of the instrument from the Middle Ages -- beginning at the bottom left and finishing at the top right, inserting improvisation, new sections, and interludes along the way. Van Wissem's debut album, Retrograde Renaissance Lute: A Classical Deconstruction, appeared on Persephone in 2000. It startled listeners in Europe and the United States and won a surprisingly large number of press reviews. He followed it with Narcissus Drowning in 2002. In 2003, Van Wissem recorded Diplopia, his first collaborative album with Lucas and the first of six on Willem Breuker's BVHaast label; other albums included Simulacrum: Mirror Images for Solo Lute and Electronics (issued the same year), The Universe of Absence with Lucas, and Proletarian Drift with Akiyama in 2004, the solo Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear in 2005, and A Rose by Any Other Name: Anonymous Lute Solos of the Golden Age, which was his debut on Incunabulum in conjunction with BVHaast in 2006. Another collaboration with Akiyama, Hymn for a Fallen Angel, was released by Van Wissem's label in 2007; the solo Stations of the Cross appeared as well. In 2008, Van Wissem and Blackshaw recorded two albums as Brethren of the Free Spirit, The Wolf Shall Also Dwell with the Lamb (on Important) and All Things Are from Him, Through Him and In Him (on audioMER). He also released his solo album A Priori on Incunabulum. Van Wissem's reputation was spreading far and wide. He was regularly reviewed not only by the independent music press, but his international live appearances were reviewed by television and radio, and in print. Between 2009 and 2011, he released three more albums on Important: It Is All That Is Made, Ex Patris, and The Joy That Never Ends. Van Wissem began recording collaboratively in 2011. Suite the Hen's Teeth with Smegma and Downland with United Bible Studies also appeared in 2011. His recorded collaborations with film director and musician Jarmusch began in earnest with 2012's Apokatastasis, which was followed quickly by Concerning the Entrance into Eternity and The Mystery of Heaven -- each was released on a different label. That year also saw the release of Movement in Marble/Stone with electro-acoustic composer Gregg Kowalsky. In 2013, Van Wissem issued the solo album Nihil Obstat on Important, and with it the title track to the score for Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, in collaboration with the director's band SQÜRL. The full soundtrack, which also featured Yasmine Hamdan, Zola Jesus, and Madeline Follin (Cults), was released in 2014, after the score won the Cannes Award. In December, Van Wissem issued the solo It Is Time for You to Return on Crammed Discs. That album featured Föllakzoid's Domingo Garcia-Huidobro, who directed the dreamlike 2012 film Partir to Live; Van Wissem also collaborated on the score, which was released in 2015 by Sacred Bones. When Shall This Bright Day Begin, featuring guest vocals by Zola Jesus, was released by Consouling Sounds in 2016. The same label released Nobody Living Can Ever Make Me Turn Back in 2017. Van Wissem reactivated Incunabulum for 2017's New Lute Music for Film. His third Consouling Sounds release, We Adore You, You Have No Name, followed in 2018. In 2019, Van Wissem and Jarmusch returned to Sacred Bones with the full-length An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil. Also in 2019, Van Wissem was commissioned by the Cinémathèque Française in Paris to compose the soundtrack to the restored original version of the F.W. Murnau 1922 silent classic Nosferatu, in celebration of its centennial. While writing the score he came across a Dutch double 7" LP containing the field recorded sounds of extinct birds on Rotterdam's streets. He manipulated those sounds with electronics and added them to his film score. In 2022, he released it as Nosferatu (The Call of the Deathbird) on Incunabulum. The following year, Van Wissem re-teamed with Jarmusch for American Landscapes. That year he also provided an award-winning original score to Pierre Creton's film A Prince. In January 2024, Van Wissem issued the solo single "With Our Hands Our Hearts to Raise," and followed it with the long-player The Night Dwells in the Day two weeks later.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo