Jon Larsen is an autodidact guitarist

Guitarist

A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...

, composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, surreal

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

istic painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, and record producer

Record producer

A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

 with heavy influence on the revival of Gypsy jazz

Gypsy jazz

Gypsy jazz is an idiom often said to have been started by guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt in the 1930s. Because its origins are largely in France it is often called by the French name, "Jazz manouche," or alternatively, "manouche jazz," even in English language sources...

 worldwide. Founder of the Hot Club de Norvège

Hot Club de Norvège

Hot Club de Norvège is a string Jazz quartet from Norway, established in 1979, by guitar player Jon Larsen with childhood friends Per Frydenlund and Svein Aarbostad...

 (1979-), the Django Festival (1980-), Hot Club Records

Hot Club Records

Hot Club Records is a Record company established 1982, by guitar player Jon Larsen. More than 350 released CDs, DVDs and books, mostly jazz related.Some artists on Hot Club Records: Chet Baker, Philip Catherine, Warne Marsh, and the poet Jan Erik Vold....

 (1982-), Symphonic Django (2005-), Zonic Entertainment (2007-), and Den Gyldne Banan ("The Golden Banana", art book publishing company) (2009-), and the Project Stardust (micrometeorites), in 2010. In 2007 he received the Buddy Award for his lifelong contribution to jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

.

Born in Oslo

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

, Larsen started out as a painter and guitar player, inspired by Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

, Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...

 and Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

. Later he changed to composition, and created numerous crossover projects with jazz/classical ensembles - gypsy jazz groups together with classical string quartets, chamber orchestras and full symphony orchestras.

He has produced more than 350 jazz records for Hot Club Records

Hot Club Records

Hot Club Records is a Record company established 1982, by guitar player Jon Larsen. More than 350 released CDs, DVDs and books, mostly jazz related.Some artists on Hot Club Records: Chet Baker, Philip Catherine, Warne Marsh, and the poet Jan Erik Vold....

, including CDs with Chet Baker

Chet Baker

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...

, Stephane Grappelli

Stéphane Grappelli

Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands....

, Warne Marsh

Warne Marsh

Warne Marion Marsh was an American tenor saxophonist born in Los Angeles.-Biography:Marsh came from an affluent background: his father was the cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh , and his mother Elizabeth was a violinist...

, Nappy Brown

Nappy Brown

Napoleon Brown Goodson Culp better known by his stage name Nappy Brown, was an American R&B singer. His hits include the 1955 Billboard chart #2, "Don't Be Angry" and "Night Time Is the Right Time"...

, Philip Catherine

Philip Catherine

Philip Catherine is a Belgian jazz guitarist.-Biography:He was born in London from an English mother and Belgian father....

, and most of the prominent Gypsy jazz musicians, like Biréli Lagrène

Biréli Lagrène

Biréli Lagrène is a French guitarist and bassist. He came to prominence in the 1980s for his Django Reinhardt-influenced style on the classical guitar, as well as for being a jazz fusion virtuoso on the electric guitar...

, Jimmy Rosenberg

Jimmy Rosenberg

Joseph Rosenberg is a Sinto-Romani guitarist from Netherlands, known for his virtuoso playing of Gypsy jazz and other related styles....

, Andreas Öberg

Andreas Öberg

.Andreas Öberg is a Swedish guitar player.-Early life:Öberg was born in Stockholm on August 6, 1978. He began playing guitar at the age of 8 years old and studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.- Career :...

, Angelo Debarre

Angelo Debarre

Angelo Debarre is a Romani guitarist in the manouche jazz style.He began playing at age 8 and in 1984 started his first group, the Angelo Debarre Quintet...

, Florin Nicolescu, Babik Reinhardt

Babik Reinhardt

Babik Reinhardt was one of Django Reinhardt's sons, and a guitarist himself. He did not learn the guitar directly from Django, who wanted him to learn the piano instead, but from various other family members....

, Stochelo Rosenberg

Stochelo Rosenberg

Stochelo Rosenberg is a Sinti-Gypsy jazz guitarist who plays in the Jazz manouche style of Django Reinhardt and leads the Rosenberg Trio.-With The Rosenberg Trio: -Solo Albums:...

, and Adrien Moignard.

In recent years he has been leading the Strange News From Mars project, featuring various Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

 alumni: Tommy Mars

Tommy Mars

Tommy Mars is a keyboard player, best known for his work with Frank Zappa.Born in Connecticut, U.S.A., 26 October 1951 Mars began piano lessons at age eight, and later his instrument range expanded to various keyboards and synthesizers. Mars graduated in 1972 from the Hartt College of Music in...

, Bruce Fowler

Bruce Fowler

Bruce Lambourne Fowler is a prominent American trombone player and composer. He notably played trombone on many Frank Zappa records, as well as with Captain Beefheart, and in the Fowler Brothers Band...

, Arthur Barrow

Arthur Barrow

Arthur Barrow is a multi-instrumental musician, best known for his stint as a bass guitar player for Frank Zappa in the late 1970s and early 1980s.-Early life:...

, Don Preston

Don Preston

Donald Ward Preston also known as Dom DeWilde or Biff Debrie born September 21, 1932 in Flint, Michigan. Preston is an American jazz and rock and roll musician.-Biography:Preston was born into a family of musicians and began studying music at an early age...

, Bunk Gardner

Bunk Gardner

John Leon "Bunk" Gardner born . Gardner is a American musician who most notably played for Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention until the group disbanded in 1969. He plays woodwinds and tenor sax....

, Jimmy Carl Black

Jimmy Carl Black

Jimmy Carl Black , born James Inkanish, Jr., was a drummer and vocalist for The Mothers of Invention.-Career: 1960s-1990s:Born in El Paso, Texas, Black was of Cheyenne heritage...

, etc. He is also working as a producer for the label Zonic Entertainment, exclusively dedicated to music inspired by Zappa.

Documentation on Jon Larsen is to be found on many CDs, DVDs, in books, and films. Symphonic Django was presented (also on DVD) 2008 by Storm Film, who also produced a film documentary about Jon Larsen and the guitar virtuoso Jimmy Rosenberg

Jimmy Rosenberg

Joseph Rosenberg is a Sinto-Romani guitarist from Netherlands, known for his virtuoso playing of Gypsy jazz and other related styles....

, Jon & Jimmy (2010, winner of the Dutch Edison Award).

Paintings

Jon Larsen started out as a painter, inspired by surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, especially Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

. He made his debut solo exhibition of pictures as early as April 1976, the same month he had his first gig with the string trio Clo-Z. This was followed by annual exhibitions until 1995, when he started composing music full time. 1976-78 he received training in drawing by his mentor, the Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 artist Ryszard Warsinski. In 1978 he moved to Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, in order to study Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

, and became a part of the Catalán

Catalan people

The Catalans or Catalonians are the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia that form a historical nationality in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France are sometimes included in this definition...

 surrealist movement at the time. In 1979 he returned to Norway, and established the jazz quartet, Hot Club de Norvège

Hot Club de Norvège

Hot Club de Norvège is a string Jazz quartet from Norway, established in 1979, by guitar player Jon Larsen with childhood friends Per Frydenlund and Svein Aarbostad...

, but continued to paint full time. Larsen's paintings are often atmospheric landscapes, filled with stones, mountains and unexpected objects, and are often humorous or whimsical. A book about Jon Larsen's surrealistic pictures, "Maler i solnedgang" (170 pictures, text in Norwegian), was released in May 2009.
In 2011 a retrospective exhibition with Jon 42 of Larsen's main works was held in Trondheim

Trondheim

Trondheim , historically, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. With a population of 173,486, it is the third most populous municipality and city in the country, although the fourth largest metropolitan area. It is the administrative centre of...

 and Aalesund.

Solo works

• Superstrings - 1992
• Guitaresque- 1994
• The Next Step - 2003
• Short Stories From Catalonia - 2005
• Live with Vertavo String Quartet - (recorded 1995) - 2006
• Strange News From Mars - 2007
• The Jimmy Carl Black Story - 2008
• A Portrait Of Jon Larsen - 2010
• Willie Nickerson's Egg (international version, together with Tommy Mars
  Tommy Mars
  Tommy Mars is a keyboard player, best known for his work with Frank Zappa.Born in Connecticut, U.S.A., 26 October 1951 Mars began piano lessons at age eight, and later his instrument range expanded to various keyboards and synthesizers. Mars graduated in 1972 from the Hartt College of Music in...
  
  ) - 2011

With Hot Club de Norvège

• String Swing - 1981
• Old, New, Borrowed & Blue - 1982
• Gloomy - 1984
• Swing de Paris - 1986
• La Roue Fleurie (with Angelo Debarre
  Angelo Debarre
  Angelo Debarre is a Romani guitarist in the manouche jazz style.He began playing at age 8 and in 1984 started his first group, the Angelo Debarre Quintet...
  
  ) - 1992
• Swinging With Jimmy (with Jimmy Rosenberg) - 1994
• Portrait Of Django (with various French gypsy musicians) - 1995
• Vertavo (with Vertavo String Quartet
  Vertavo String Quartet
  The Vertavo String Quartet is a Norwegian string quartet, founded in Hamar in 1984. The four women forming the quartet are violinists Øyvor Volle and Berit Cardas, violist Henninge Landaas, and cellist Bjørg Lewis....
  
  ) - 1995
• Hot Shots (with Babik Reinhardt
  Babik Reinhardt
  Babik Reinhardt was one of Django Reinhardt's sons, and a guitarist himself. He did not learn the guitar directly from Django, who wanted him to learn the piano instead, but from various other family members....
  
  , etc.) - 1997
• Moreno (with Moreno and Angelo Debarre) - 1998
• Presenting Ola & Jimmy (with Ola Kvernberg and Jimmy Rosenberg
  Jimmy Rosenberg
  Joseph Rosenberg is a Sinto-Romani guitarist from Netherlands, known for his virtuoso playing of Gypsy jazz and other related styles....
  
  ) - 2000
• Angelo Is Back In Town (with Angelo Debarre
  Angelo Debarre
  Angelo Debarre is a Romani guitarist in the manouche jazz style.He began playing at age 8 and in 1984 started his first group, the Angelo Debarre Quintet...
  
  ) - 2001
• White Night Stories (with Tromso Symphony Orchestra) - 2002
• White Night Stories Live - 2002
• Django's Tiger (with Jimmy Rosenberg
  Jimmy Rosenberg
  Joseph Rosenberg is a Sinto-Romani guitarist from Netherlands, known for his virtuoso playing of Gypsy jazz and other related styles....
  
   and Andreas Öberg
  Andreas Öberg
  .Andreas Öberg is a Swedish guitar player.-Early life:Öberg was born in Stockholm on August 6, 1978. He began playing guitar at the age of 8 years old and studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.- Career :...
  
  ) - 2003
• A Stranger In Town (with Bjørn Vidar Solli) - 2004
• Hot Cats (with Camelia String Quartet) - 2005
• Django Music - 2008
• The Best Of Hot Club de Norvège - 2009

Main compositions

• Jimmy's Suite - 1993
• Vertavo - 1995
• White Night Stories - 2002
• Short Stories From Catalonia (Musique Noir) - 2005
• Luna Suite - 2006
• Strange News From Mars - 2007

Film

• Symphonic Django - Storm Studio - 2007
• Jon & Jimmy - Storm Studio - 2010. Winner of the Dutch Edison Award 2010.

Awards

• NOPA's "Composition Of The Year", for Jimmy's Suite - 1993
• The Buddy Award (for life long contribution to jazz) - 2007
• The Council of Oslo's Artist's Award - 2008
• The Kardemomme Award (Thorbjorn Egner's legacy) - 2009

External links

• http://www.myspace.com/jonlarsenguitar
• http://www.hotclub.no/jonlarsen/index.html