Steve Tibbetts

Steve Tibbetts is an American guitarist, composer, producer, and world traveler. His fusion of exotic and urban sonic landscapes offers an intuitively receptive approach to sound creation. He plays guitars, synthesizers, and percussion instruments, and uses the studio as another. His music weaves elements of vanguard improvisation, jazz, rock, ambient, and an idiosyncratic interpretation of global folk traditions. Tibbetts calls his music "post-modern neo-primitivism." His acclaimed string of intermittent releases for ECM began with 1982's acoustic Northern Song. 1989's panoramic Big Map Idea made the new age charts, while 1994's The Fall of Us All earned plaudits from indie rock and jazz outlets. In 1997, he issued Chö, the first of two globally celebrated collaborations with nun Choying Drolma; the second, Selwa was released in 2004. 2010's Natural Causes landed on the jazz album charts, while 2018's Life Of went Top Five. In 2022, ECM issued Hellbound Train: An Anthology.