The serene ambient jazz improvisations come courtesy of Copenhagen-based jazz guitarist Tao Højgaard. Taking the art of jazz guitar to the frontier, Tao uses a variety of effect pedals and loop machines to build robust, droning soundscapes. Tao cites influences including jazz guitar pioneer Jim Hall, electronic musician/composer Scott Morgan, the father of Bebop Charlie Parker, as well as a wealth of film music composers.
Tao Højgaard´s origins as a jazz guitarist come from influence and involvement with Copenhagen´s jazz scene in the 90´s. Tao soon began to play with Scandinavia´s foremost jazz musicians, and rapidly became renowned for his lyrical jazz improvisations and complex harmonics.
In addition to his electronic jazz frontier duties, Tao does master classes and workshops on musical improvisation and music production. Tao also scores for films and television shows.
Why Mute State?
A mute state is where you wanna be when perceiving the music, and a mute state is where the artist is at while creating it (as musical improvisation takes up 90% of the players communication center in the brain) Mute State as an alias has a poetic meaning to it as well.
Reflections both emotional and cognitive more often than not are occurring in a mute state, a state where nothing has to be said or done, a state where everything flows at it’s own pace, a state where nothing can be forced and the state where you can be truly you
A mute state is a well known term in music production too. A producer will put tracks in and out of a mute state while working with the music. He will do that for both creative and technical reasons, one important one being that muting a track will reveal what it actually does to the music and thus unveiling further potential of the track.