Leo Kottke

Kottke’s music draws on blues, jazz, and folk music influences.  Focusing primarily on instrumental composition and playing, Kottke has sporadically moved in a vocal direction, singing in an unconventional yet expressive baritone.  In concert, Kottke intersperses humorous and often bizarre monologues with vocal and instrumental selections from throughout his career, played solo on his signature 6- and 12-string guitars.

Widely recognized as a master of the guitar, Leo Kottke has had a long and illustrious career.  As a youth living in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Kottke played trombone and violin before moving to the guitar and developing his own unconventional picking style.  Kottke's tunings are often unconventional as well.  Early in his career he heavily utilized open tunings, while in recent years he has used more traditional voicings but often detunes his guitars as many as two full steps below standard tuning.

In the early 1980s, Kottke began to suffer from painful tendonitis and related nerve damage caused by his vigorous and aggressive picking style (particularly on the 12-string guitar). As a result, he changed his picking style to a classical style, using the flesh of his fingertips and increasingly small amounts of fingernail rather than fingerpicks, and changing the positioning of the right hand which places less stress on the tendons. He also studied more classical and jazz-oriented compositional and playing techniques. 

With more than 30 albums to his credit, Kottke's best-known album continues to be 1969's instrumental 6- and 12-String Guitar. This album is also known as the "Armadillo album" after the armadillo pictured on its cover.  Pressured in the early 1970s to be a folk singer-songwriter rather than an instrumentalist, he recorded with backing musicians on albums such as Mudlark, Ice Water and Chewing Pine.  In recent years Kottke has begun re-recording as instrumentals tunes he wrote and recorded in the early 1970s.

Kottke has collaborated on his records with his mentor John Fahey, as well as with Chet Atkins, Lyle Lovett, Margo Timmins, and Rickie Lee Jones. He has recorded tunes by Tom T. Hall, Johnny Cash, Carla Bley, Fleetwood Mac, The Byrds, Jorma Kaukonen, Kris Kristofferson, Randall Hylton, and many others. He is also a frequent guest on the radio variety program A Prairie Home Companion.

Summer Breeze Concerts are presented by The Performing Arts Studio and made possible by grants from the Norman Arts Council, Oklahoma Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Additional support comes from Sponsors Michael Miller; Jamie Belknap D.D.S. and Donna Sparks D.D.S.; Skye Diers, Gingerbread Nursery School; and Victor T. Wilson, M.D. P.C., Caring Pediatrics.  Contributors include Corner Post Management and Consulting; Physical Therapy Central; and Republic Bank and Trust.  Friends include Ed and Sumya Adwon; American First Abstract Co; The Crucible; The Earth Natural Foods; First State Bank; David Fries Roofing; Mark and Becky Wilson, MDS Plumbing; Pepe Delgados; Cardinal Engineering; and The Zoo Amphitheater.  In-kind support comes from Montford Inn; Residence Inn of Norman; Norman Parks and Recreation Department; The University of Oklahoma; Gilliam Music; and the Summer Breeze Stage Crew.

For additional concert information, contact The Performing Arts Studio at 405-307-9320.  For additional information on Leo Kottke, visit http://www.leokottke.com/.

Note: Information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Kottke