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All Music Guide:
Although not as well known as he deserves to be, Michael Gulezian is a talented folk-rock instrumentalist who comes out of the John Fahey/Leo Kottke/Robbie Basho school of acoustic guitar playing. All of those fellow guitarists influenced the Armenian-American, whose recordings have often had a very spiritual, dreamy, airy quality and sometimes underscore his interest in the traditional modal music of India and the Middle East. Born in 1957, Gulezian was only six when he started playing the acoustic guitar. One of the people who did a lot to encourage Gulezian's interest in many different types of music was his father, an oud player who was well-versed in Armenian and Middle Eastern styles. (The oud is a traditional Arabic lute that has been used all over the Middle East and North Africa for centuries). Growing up in Colorado, Gulezian was exposed to a wide variety of music. He learned a lot about Armenian and Middle Eastern forms from his father, and he also got into everything from rock, folk, soul, and the blues to traditional Indian artists like sitar legend Ravi Shankar (another influence). One can hear the influence of ragas and Indian classical music in Gulezian's playing, and one also hears a strong appreciation of acoustic Mississippi country blues legends like Robert Johnson, Son House, and the Rev. Gary Davis.
Gulezian was still a pre-adolescent when he discovered Fahey's music; he soon became equally knowledgeable of Kottke and Basho. And when Gulezian was a high school senior, he met Basho at a concert in Pueblo, CO. Gulezian played one of his compositions for Basho, who was impressed with both his playing and his writing, and encouraged him to send a demo to Fahey's Takoma Records. After hearing Gulezian's work, Fahey shared Basho's high opinion of him and agreed that he had a lot of potential. In 1979, Gulezian recorded his first LP, Snow, and released it on his own label, Aardvark Records. Fahey decided that he wanted to re-release the record on Takoma, but with a few changes. After two tracks were added and three were dropped, most of Snow was reissued by Takoma as Unspoken Intentions in 1979. When Takoma went bankrupt in 1985, Gulezian felt disillusioned with the music industry and decided to take a break from recording and return to college. In 1990, he graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in marketing. It was also in the early '90s that Gulezian got back to recording and started a new label called Timbreline Music; in 1992, he released Distant Memories & Dreams on Timbreline. That CD was followed by 1994's The Dare of an Angel and 2001's Language of the Flame, both of which are also on Gulezian's Timbreline label. In 2002, Fantasy (which now owns the Takoma catalog) reissued Unspoken Intentions on CD.
Wikipedia:
Michael Gulezian is an American composer and Fingerstyle guitarist. He is noted for dramatic compositions, a penchant for manipulating metre, an affinity for open tunings, and an unconventionally free two-handed technical approach. Gulezian's use of bottleneck slide on 12-string guitar, coupled with his command of reverse analog reverbs have made his recordings notable for their dream-like sonic atmosphere. Gulezian inhabits a musical territory between his mentor John Fahey, and his friend and colleague Michael Hedges.
Biography
Gulezian began playing acoustic guitar at the age of six; although he never took formal lessons, he underwent years of self-imposed classical guitar training. He was influenced by his mother, who sang Armenian folk songs, and his father, classical Middle-Eastern oud virtuoso and Pharonic Egyptian ethnomusicologist H. Aram Gulezyan. Michael immersed himself in his Armenian cultural heritage, Middle Eastern music, non-Western Indian and Chinese music, improvisational rāgas, as well as Western idioms such as Gregorian chants, rock, Jazz and folk. In 1965 the family moved from the New York City area to Tucson, Arizona.
As a young guitarist he was influenced by the early Mississippi Delta fingerstyle guitarists: John Hurt, Bukka White, Son House, and Robert Johnson, as well as their contemporaries from the Atlantic seaboard, Blind Blake and Reverend Gary Davis. Later he discovered and explored the music of John Fahey and Leo Kottke, and further broadened his musical horizons by listening to Keith Jarrett, John McLaughlin, Ravi Shankar and Sun Ra.
While attending Colorado’s Holy Cross Abbey, Gulezian studied Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and James Joyce, who became a significant influence on his perception of language, music, linear time, Roman Catholicism, and temporal reality. While still in high school, Gulezian was introduced to John Fahey through Robbie Basho. After recording his first self-published album Snow on his own Aardvark Records imprint, Gulezian signed to John Fahey’s Takoma Records label. Snow was re-released in 1980 (with minor modifications) to a global audience on Takoma/Chrysalis as Unspoken Intentions. It received international critical acclaim, and established Michael as a visionary artist; musicians such as Henry Kaiser and Michael Hedges cited Unspoken Intentions as a major influence. In the midst of Gulezian's accelerating professional success, the Takoma label went bankrupt. Disillusioned with the music industry, Gulezian returned to college and graduated with honors, with degrees in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from the University of Arizona’s Eller Center for the Study of the Private Market Economy.
Upon graduation Gulezian returned to a career in music. He founded the Timbreline Music label, releasing his third album Distant Memories & Dreams in 1992. He began touring again and published his fourth CD The Dare of an Angel in 1994. In 1997 Gulezian moved to Nashville, Tennessee. In 2002 Unspoken Intentions was reissued on CD by Fantasy Records. His fifth CD was released in 2003 - the incendiary Language of the Flame, and followed in 2005 by the live recording Concert at St. Olaf College.
In recent years Michael has played hundreds of concerts, and continues to present guitar workshops and master classes at colleges and universities across the USA. In addition to his live concerts, Gulezian has been featured in the USA on many radio and television broadcasts, and is regularly played on NPR.
