Christmas Carols

Styles may come and go, but good music will weave it's ageless magic no matter what the current fad. Ulli Bögershausen is a guitar wizard with a truly remarkable craft at his command. He possesses a gift for making time stand still. And while the moment lingers, his solo guitar playing paints pictures upon the very soul of his audience - inobtrusive, yet unforgettable; vignettes glowing with the serenity of a day in late summer, a slight melancholy blended wonderfully with a mediterranean joy of living in a steady dance-like flow of notes in the air of an endless blue September day. After more than twenty years of performing and recording, the seasoned German guitarist can boast stacks of rhapsodizing concert reviews from newspapers and magazines anywhere between Los Angeles, Bonn, and Taipei. He has held audiences spellbound at guitar festivals in the U.S.A. and in the concert halls of Japan, Taiwan, Korea and most recently China. His playing has been called quot;breathtaking in it's intertwined harmonies and it's unfailing timingquot;, his performances have been considered quot;as if from a fairy talequot;, and his albums have been regarded as models of quot;sensitive string wizardryquot; and of quot;guitar music for the 21st centuryquot;. Steeped in the tradition of the folk guitar, but constantly refined by his classical studies, Bögershausen's playing continues to leave the audience with the best of both worlds. A breezy lightness pervades everything, tastefully balanced by an almost classical sense of formal depth and compositional coherence. Ulli Bögershausen has taken his time to develop a style all his own, quietly incorporating state-of-the-art skills, styles, and techniques all the while. As a result, Bögershausen not only plays two or more independent lines at the same time, but also manages to give each line it's distinct voice as if a complete orchestra were at work. His crystal-clear single-note runs make the 32nd notes sparkle intensely like effervescent water. Like legendary John Renbourn, Ulli Bögershausen has given the steelstring guitar an unheard-of sound of effortless elegance, whose liveliness owes little to the strict classical guitar ideal of tone. His international breakthrough, 1995's landmark album quot;Ageless Guitar Solosquot;, deftly summarizes more than 30 years of fingerstyle guitar, easily matching original renditions by the likes of Leo Kottke and Alex DeGrassi in terms of feeling and virtuoso performance. In his mostly balladlike original compositions, Ulli Bögershausen never seems to run out of surprising and intriguing melodic inventiveness. Executed with an airy charm and yet with the devotion of a real pro, Bögershausen's pieces are accessible enough to make for instant listening delight, while crafted sufficiently complex to yield discoveries with each new encounter.