Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra 
Five time Grammy nominated guitarist Ottmar Liebert has release some of the most successful instrumental guitar albums ever, with more Gold and Platinum certifications than any other acoustic guitarist. (RIAA)
"Nouveau Flamenco" was Ottmar Liebert’s legendary, double platinum selling debut that became the biggest selling guitar album of all time. Not simply redefining Flamenco music for the modern age but creating a whole new genre of music which sparked a revival in world music. Over the years, Liebert has become one of instrumental music's most popular and compelling live performers around the world.
Since then, Liebert’s incredible global success on a musical level
often seems like a simple outgrowth of his cultural background and
powerful wanderlust in his formative years. Born in Cologne, Germany to
Chinese-German father and Hungarian mother, he began playing guitar at
11, and traveled extensively through Europe and Asia intent on fully
absorbing each musical tradition he encountered. After pursuing his
Rock and Roll dreams first in his native Germany and then in Boston, he
abandoned the frustrations of the East coast and settled in Santa Fe,
New Mexico.
By 1989, he had founded the first incarnation of his
new band Luna Negra. Nouveau Flamenco began life as a self-produced
local release called Marita: Shadows and Storms, copies of which local
Indian artist Frank Howell distributed in his art galleries. When the
record found its way to radio stations and began generating a buzz
among programmers and an unprecedented response among listeners, Higher
Octave Music picked it up and released a fully remastered version.
“I
was honestly happy playing this music in hotels and restaurants in
Santa Fe, and going in one year from doing that to opening for Miles
Davis was a pretty intense jump,” he recalls. “Most shocking for me was
to realize how many different people from so many diverse cultures
embraced it. I still get letters from fans in Europe, South-America,
Australia, and Asia...it’s been a really gratifying experience. I’ve
had the opportunity to play in a wide variety of cultural settings with
musicians from around the world, and that has been a great experience,
too.”
Liebert has since become one of the most successful instrumental
artists of the past decade, thrilling audiences throughout the world
and releasing a catalog of classic recordings, including the remix
collection Euphoria (1995), the live album Viva! (1995), the double CD
Opium (1996) and the classical-oriented orchestral album Leaning into
the Night (1997). He wrapped up his decade with Epic with 2001’s Little
Wing and went back to Higher Octave Music, releasing a lush album of
lullabies called In the Arms of Love in 2002 and an album with Luna Negra XL called The Santa Fe Sessions (2003).
La Semana (2004) was the first all-new band album in five years, followed by Winter Rose (2005), which featured original pieces, classical music and christmas songs. In 2006 Liebert's record label SSRI released One Guitar, his first solo guitar recording, which received Liebert's fourth nomination for a Grammy. His newest releases are Up Close (2008), which is a binaural dummy head surround sound recording, and The Scent of Light (2008) a labor of five years.
Billboard Charts RIAA Certification
La Luna (2004) from Ottmar Liebert on Vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/2971862