Jozef Van Wissem is an avant-garde composer and lutenist who plays his unique all-black baroque lute all over the world. His timeless music is often described as hypnotic, minimal, and hauntingly atmospheric, merging beauty with a dark, meditative edge. His lyrics have a mythical Christian appeal, incorporating themes of love, faith, and the afterlife, often with a repetitive, mantra-like quality. He studied lute in New York with Patrick O’Brien in the 1990s and has since built a career that bridges classical traditions with modern sounds like drones, electronics, field recordings and voice.
According to The New York Times “Van Wissem is both an avant-garde composer and a baroque lutenist, and thus no stranger to dichotomy”. He has gained recognition for his innovative approach, the “liberation of the lute”, as he describes it. According to Richard Foster in The Quietus, “Van Wissem is possibly the best known lute player in the Western world." Early in his career he scored the Sims Medieval Video Game. He collaborates with filmmaker and musician Jim Jarmusch, including the award-winning soundtrack for Only Lovers Left Alive, for which Van Wissem won the Cannes Soundtrack Award in 2013. A world tour with Jarmusch and their 5th record “ The Day The Angels Cried” is coming up in 2025. His solo work spans albums like Stations of The Cross (2008) which Wire Magazine labeled a small masterpiece, New Lute Music For Film (2013) and Behold! I Make All Things New (2022), as well as scores for films like Un Prince (2023). Van Wissem tours extensively, performing in diverse venues from rock festivals to churches, and has worked with artists like Tilda Swinton and Zola Jesus. In 2019 he was commissioned by Cinematheque Francaise to score the silent horror film Nosferatu (1922). He released the soundtrack in 2022 on his own Incunabulum label. In 2022 four of his compositions including the vocal piece “Love Destroys All Evil” were featured in HBO’s Irma Vep Series (starring Alicia Vikander). In 2023 Van Wissem scored the Cannes Award winning film Un Prince. In 2024 Van Wissem was commissioned to score the silent film The Fall Of The House Of Usher (1928). In 2026 he will premiere his new live score for The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920).
A new solo record and worldwide tour is slated for early 2026. He will be performing all new material consisting amongst others of cinematic hypnotist slide lute pieces evoking contemporary deserted landscapes.
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