Inspiration from Above Trixie Whitley & Stian Westerhus

2012. 01. 08.

In the third part of Inspiration from Above series: two strong, sensitive personalities and straight music.

Trixie Whitley was born in Ghent, Belgium in 1987, in a family of artists, musicians and poets. She moved with her parents to New York when she was a year old. Since the tender age of 3 she grew up spending time in recording studio’s in NYC (Electric Lady Land etc…) and in New Orleans with her father Chris Whitley. After she moved back to Belgium with her mother she started playing drums at age 11. Shortly after she started touring intensively around Europe between the age of 12-15 with several music theatre companies where she had opportunities to perform as an actress, playing the drums and singing. Around the same time she started DJ’ing and had oportunities to spin at the SMAK museum and the ESKIMO parties in Belgium aswell as in Amsterdam, New York, Brussels and in the main tent of the DOUR festival. At age 14 she started dancing and touring professionaly for the contemporary dance company “Les Ballets C de la B”. Shortly after she quit school, and at 17 she moved on her own back to New York. While surviving as a waitress and living in Brooklyn and Queens for nearly 2 years she started teaching herself the piano and focussed mainly on her own songwriting. During that time she did contribute to other projects as well. She’s been in spain for recordings,did backing vocals for the new Chocolate Genius album with producer Craig Street (Norah Jones, Meshel Ndegeocello…) Lead and backup vocals for Jerboa and Krewcial and backing vocals for her father, Chris Whitley’s last album “Soft dangerous shores”. In the meantime she performed numerous times with her own solo project in NYC venues. After the passing of her father, she once again moved back to Belgium for a little while.

Stian Westerhus is one of Norway’s most in demand young musicians playing in bands like Monolithic (with Kenneth Kapstad from Motorpsycho), Puma, Nils Petter Molvaer Group and many more. For the last few years Stian Westerhus has put more and more energy into challenging the electric guitar alone on a stage. Having been blessed with little or no respect for the instrument his performances balance raw expressiveness, virtuosity and melodic instinct utilizing his Norwegian heritage as well as growing up listening to Slayer. With a soundscape far beyond the standard guitar he seeks to push the boundaries for improvised music across the muddy waters of genres. Stian Westerhus’ debut solo album “Galore” was released May 2009 on Rune Grammofon/TLRC, and Stian’s second solo album “Pitch Black Star Spangled” was released on Rune Grammofon in May 2010.