Andreas Vollenweider for RIO/Avant

 

Andreas Vollenweider is a very talented Swiss musician and composer who's music has many different elements in it: too Jazz-rock-ish to be considered Classical, yet too classical to be categorized as full-on Jazz/Fusion. His primary instrument is a modified Harp of his own design. He can produce both acoustic and electric tones from it, and it adds a very unique and distinquishable edge to his music as opposed to many other "New-Age" artists in existence today. While Vollenweider has been considered many things from a New-Age performer to a Jazz musician to an Electronica composer, his style and use of many exotic instruments while still keeping a rock edge has caused him to defy categorization. What better place, then, for him to be than on the archives?

 

Give him a listen, and I promise you will not be dissapointed. He has released many albums during his twenty year+ career, but my personal favorite at this time is "Down To The Moon", so if you manage to find a song clip from that album, that will be your best bet, I feel. Some people may think that his music doesn't have enough rock influence to be considered "Progressive ROCK", but I feel that his hybrid style of classical, eastern and western instruments, including electric guitars at times, merits the RIO/Avant-Prog inclusion on his behalf, but you must be the judge. Please give hima  fair go, however, because truly each album he has produced is different from the last, and it may be difficult at first to see the appeal, but the very fact that he is so diverse makes him deserving of being here SOMEWHERE, does it not?

 

 

Here is his official website:

 

 

New Age

 

certainly not RIO/Avant

 

Prog related at best

 

He played New Age, World, Soft Jazz and Neo Classical, but no relation with Prog, except his choice of instruments, and this doesn't mean too much.

 

Iván.