Guitarist and composer Harvey Valdes lives in Brooklyn, New York. He earned a BFA degree from The New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music.
Harvey worked with artists such as Butch Morris, Karl Berger, Rhys Chatham, Daniel Carter, and the Middle Eastern/Balkan ensemble Anistar, among many others.
His sound score for Utopians, which premiered at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival, comprised “one of the longest-lasting guitar improvisations since (Neil Young’s score for) Dead Man.”
Harvey has also performed at length in New York theater. Indeed, he held the guitar/oud chair as an onstage musician and cast member for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical The Band’s Visit. Originally, he had the role Off Broadway at The Atlantic Theater before moving with the ensemble for the hit run at Broadway’s Barrymore Theater. He played on the show’s 2019 Grammy Award-winning cast album, and received a daytime Emmy Award for his broadcast performance with the ensemble, along with participating in the 10 Tony wins as a cast member.
Harvey has also worked with renowned downtown theater ensemble The Wooster Group, including its presentation of Cavalli’s 1640 opera “La Didone”; for that production, which toured the U.S. and Europe, he provided a modern interpretation of the Baroque lute, playing electric guitar and guitar synthesizer within an ensemble that also included harpsichord, theorbo and accordion.
Additional collaborators over the years have included Noël Akchoté, Gerry Hemingway, Lukas Ligeti, Killick Hinds, Jamshied Sharifi, Sean Sonderegger, Henri Scars Struck, and Bern Nix.
Harvey was recently featured on multiple compilation albums, including the fifth in Elliott Sharp’s anthology series “Never Meta Guitar,” and “Walk My Way,” a five volume 577 Records set featuring 49 guitarists of 32 different nationalities from six continents and virtually every sort of musical background. He also played on Eight Hands, One Mind by the Dom Minasi Guitar Quartet with Briggan Krauss and Hans Tanmen, as well as recorded the duo album Nueva Guitarra with avant-metal guitarist Alvaro Domene.
Harvey Valdes’ music traverses diverse genres, from avant- jazz and Middle Eastern/Balkan music to improvised film scores and the compositions of Bach.
Harvey has an intrepid curiosity about the guitar’s sonic and expressive range; he is also a trained player of the Arabic oud, as well as the Turkish cümbüş.
To date, he has released three albums as a soloist/leader: “Solitude Intones Its Echo” (Destiny, 2019), a set of concise, engaging solo improvisations; “Roundabout” (2015), his solo debut featuring lyrically inventive takes on jazz standards; and “PointCounterPoint” (2015), a bristling, Mahavishnu-meets-math-rock trio album with violinist Sana Nagano and drummer Joe Hertenstein.
In April 2022, Destiny Records will present Harvey’s newest album: “Novare: J.S. Bach Lute Works on Electric Guitar.”
About the imaginative virtuosity of Valdes, guitarist maestro David Torn said: “When I first heard Harvey, I thought: ‘Well, here’s another badass mother on the scene – wow.’”
I recently discovered the work of EVANGELINA MASCARDI, a classical trained lutist, who is definitely worth checking out.
When I shared some of her Youtube tracks with a friend a few days ago, he responded by sharing NOVARE with me, which I immediately fell in love with.
Bach is god ( apologies to the atheists among us), and amazing musicians like Mr. Valdes continue to keep his music relevant.
As Peter III of Russia might have cried out in appreciation; HUZZAH!!!