Boštjan Leben Teams Up with Yvette Holzwarth on the Single “Once”, a Teaser for the Album “Traces”

Composer, producer, guitarist, sound designer, session musician and educator Boštjan Leben has spent more than three decades building a creative path that goes well beyond the usual musical boundaries. His work is marked by an exploration of the links between sound, human experience and different cultural traditions. He honed his craft in Europe, the United States and India, and what has always fascinated him most is the role of music as a universal language and an archetypal form of human expression.

Over a rich career he has made music for theater productions, TV projects and experimental ensembles, while also putting his name to a string of solo albums as both writer and performer. Among them are Saute Surmadi, Aphrodisiac, Wu-Wei, Ritual, Night Songs, Letters, Atisarga and the latest project, Traces. Alongside creating, he has also been devoted to teaching guitar for more than thirty years, and as a radio host he has put together over 900 shows on blues, jazz and ethno music.

If he had to describe his own creative path, Leben would see himself as a wanderer, a troubadour and a seeker of lost harmony who believes in a dialogue between lyrics and sound. Over the years his musical world has been strongly shaped by artists like Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen, and above all by the conviction that some of life’s mysteries are best revealed through music.

The first track, Once, is the herald of the album Traces. Like the album as a whole, it’s a meeting of two artists from different musical worlds – Boštjan Leben and Yvette Holzvarth; vocalist, violinist, composer and singer based in Los Angeles, whose career has included work with quite a few star names, such as: Stevie Wonder, Ariana Grande, George Benson, Back Street Boys, Miroslav Tadić, etc.

The single Once previews the album Traces, which will be released in full this fall. It will feature a collection of ten tracks that don’t bow to fast-moving trends but instead build a space for listening, reflection and inner focus. The upcoming album is a musical essay exploring the border between sound and silence, between the personal and the universal, between the moment and eternity.

So Traces won’t be just a collection of songs, but a carefully considered sonic dialogue between two artists who use music to explore transience, memory and those invisible traces we leave behind.