"Kevin believes in his bold ideas no matter how risky. Great art is born of passion and to pursue his art he is not only comfortable with unknowns and risks, he is compelled to explore them in many ways completely alone - untethered - free of any obligation to any voice other than his own. Don’t be fooled. It’s a thoughtful complex vision of previously unknown instrument voices and tunings and harmonies and melodic ideas - all painstakingly pondered and tinkered with up until the first note. After that it’s a musical base jump. A plunge into the abyss."

- K.M. (USA)

"Esoteric, indeed: John Abercrombie Meets Terje Rypdal in the Court of the Crimson King.

I went for total immersion and listened to the first six of your seven recent albums in reverse chronological order on a triple-digit desert Sun Day, and was delightfully chilled out.

My favorite track after a first listen-through is The leaves are full of voices from Ethereal I. The spacious harmonic tapestry of the piano is woven through with lyrical threads of melodic guitar on this cut in a way that both paints a picture and tells a story. Lovely."


- Will Clipman  (USA)
  7-time GRAMMY Nominee and Canyon Records percussionist with R. Carlos Nakai

"Dear Kevin,
I listened several times to 17/66 and I was waiting to have deep enough words to tell you about it.
The musical landscape your draw with your unique instruments is incredibly rich, deep, complex and beautiful. Listening to your opus is like entering in an empty space where images come one after the other like dancing colored lights.

You play with light, you play with shadow, you play with colors. With your music, you touch one's deep emotions. Are we in an inner space, in a cosmic dimension? Your music joins microscopic and macroscopic.
The sound of the album is amazing, you developed a one of a kind acoustic sound and your playing is sensible, precise, carrying your dream in a sweet and loving mode.
Your music is a kind of western modern raga!

Each piece of these harmonics blocs is like a tableau coming from the deep universe. From which planet are you, Kevin Kastning?
Bravo my friend, I thank life to have met you. You are a wonderful artist. Long life to you my friend."

-- Philippe Fouquet (FRANCE)

"Kevin, I enjoyed listening to your CDs. I like your style and the music has an intriguing atmosphere." 

- Steve Hackett  (UK)

"Hi Kevin: Sweet improvisations you do with Mark Wingfield. Bravo!"

- Michael Chapdelaine  (USA)

"Your music is amazing, Kevin!!! Some of it sounds like microtonal Jazz from another dimension!!! All beautifully performed and recorded. Your music created these crystalline-mind structures that put the listener in touch with other realities. Amazing.  I am very intrigued by your musical background. I'm going to spend some more time with your music but I already appreciate and respect it greatly."

- Adam Berry (USA)
  Soundtrack composer

"Stunning compositions and arrangements stunningly played. Love the sound of your guitars. I just listened to a song of you playing 36 string double contraguitar. on YouTube fascinating. Love your work."

- Wouter Kellerman
  GRAMMY-winning flautist (South Africa)
 

"I would not have tried to guess what your experience of the environment of keys would be for you in contrast to strings.

When you approach the piano, the strength of the composition is in the relationships of notes. Are they played together. Chords or familiar clusters with special emotional meaning find a place in your heart, and we as listeners can appropriate these unfamiliar collections of notes as emotional language of our own. You play some of those complex chord/cluster structures on the guitar perhaps, but the focus on the piano is much more about the architecture of the cluster relationships.

I think there is something fundamentally similar in your music that may not even be available to you as a consideration. Your music feels to me like it is seeking the way or finding the right sounds as it goes. As Roethke said, “I learn by going where I have to go.” And you reject the easy answers (church chords, etc.). Those two qualities unify the piano and guitar works. They both seek to express an evolving structure triggered by the sounds that preceded it. Each motion comes as a result of the previous as though it were implied. And you don’t like to fall into common chords, so there is always something a little beyond the Universal Chord Book in your movement.

I was taught in theater that a very poor actor can begin a monologue and the audience will be able to guess how long it will be. A great actor can deliver each line as though it might be the last. It proves insufficient, that last line, so another line is required. And so forth. I find that in you. I don’t see the ending coming, but after you stop, I realize you have found the end whether I want more or not. You have found the place where the right questions are left unanswered. I think you end in a question. Most everything serious avoids a definitive major chords, except when it is a joke or ironic statement (“She’s leaving home, Bye Bye.... then resolve the minor into a major chord.).

The seeking is life and death. Am I satisfied by life? Do I know where I am going? Is there a pattern to experience? I don’t feel safe at all without some pattern. I feel the necessary driving lack of something necessary throughout the journey in your music whether on guitar or piano. I have come into being when the silence was thoughtlessly broken, and you have the decency to attempt to justify that breach with a purpose. You don’t take easy answers, and that is reassuring to me. Ultimately, you don’t find a definitely location to call home, but — and this is what matters — you always hope to find the resolve. I can hear it. You have hope. Yes, of course, the Holy Grail resolution has eluded us again, and rock rolls down the hill in the morning, but you pulled no punches and proved that the journey was worthy and indeed a little ennobling in its honest effort. Our souls remain intact. We can wake without disappointment and accept that our jobs wait for us again with full bins of work to do once again and again and again. The effort is noble. The struggle is music. It is the getting things done that holds meaning for us. We can seek perfection with love even as we come to understand in time that it is only the effort that matters.

I have never detected irony in your voice. I have heard no notes of consonance or dissonance. There is nothing strident or hesitant. The soul of your movement is the movement itself. Your failures, complications, fits and starts always explore the freedom of a creature finding itself by the pattern of its own motion. You are an unselfconscious dancer in pure movement unmired by any meaning but to move and be moved still enchanted by movement to the end.

I thought of the Bartok String Quartets with Piano I. It felt exactly right.

But some pieces feel they have become objects on.their own. They define something. The have a special voice independent of their composer. Those pieces have been properly born. PIANO I has some of that.

To sum up succinctly: Your music rocks."

 - Billy Sheppard
   BIlly's Bunker Reviews (US)

"Kevin,
I'm blown away by what you do. I cannot even begin to conceptualize everything that you do musically. You're truly an inspiration.

All the best,
David"

- David Newsam; Back Bay Guitar Trio  (USA)

“An amazing player; completely original. I've never heard anything like his music.”

- Dominic Miller (guitarist with Sting)  (UK/France)

"Hi Kevin,

I finally had a chance to sit with your music for a while this chilly Vermont morning…. you paint with a very different palette than I do, but the result is undeniably lovely and involving.

All my best,

Will"

- Will Ackerman  (US)

"...the inventive genius of Massachusetts, acoustic mastermind Kevin Kastning."

- All About Jazz magazine (US)

"Kevin, your music taps into emotions never before visited!"

-- Mary Dawood (US)

Hello Kevin,

Thank you for the copy of your wonderful CD In Stories. I find it an exciting combination of your spherical guitar sounds with Mark's unique electric tone. Very unique and special. His legato melodies blend beautifully with your chordal ground work, excellent job!  Keep this wonderful music coming.

Thank you, all the best,
-- Dieter Kaudel
   K&K Systems (US)

"Hi Kevin,
Wow you are a productive man.
17/66 is so gorgeous. I love hearing your guitar playing on its own and these pieces are haunting yet also have a lightness and seem to tell a story.
Wow Kismaros even more so - so much vibe, makes me want to follow every sound and direction that the percussion and guitar take. I can easily see these in a noir movie.
Ethereal I is so beautiful. I love Spoken by the Wind. The guitars are so beautiful.
Even this late it happens - I love how you call it introspective and reflective duets. That is how they feel. As if the instruments are in deep conversations that hit the heart.

Thank you so much for your beautiful and diverse music. What a contribution with these four albums."

-- Vered Ronen
  
 

"Keep up the wonderful work of adding passionate, positive music to this world! You have a beautiful gift. It inspires me to reach for new ground with my own music!  Keep sharing your gift with the world!

Wishing you a glorious New Year! ~ Peace & Joy,"

-- Joni Bishop  (USA)
 

"Kevin, you are an AWESOME musician."

- Milton R. Gomez
  Professor at Concervatorio Nacional de Musica; Mexico City (MEXICO)
 

"When I was at camp II (Ingrahm Flats 11,000 ft.) on Mt. Rainer I listened to "Dreaming As I Knew" to help me relax. I always associate Rainier with your music." 

-- C.R. (US)

"Kevin's albums are artistically relevant, curious, and impeccable at a sound level. The art of Kevin Kastning is innovative, courageous, hypnotic. These albums are a summary of innovative music and well-captured sound."
 -    OnClassical (ITALY)

"Kevin is primarily a fretted acoustic player well known and respected for his modern classical abstract intuitive style which feels something like quantum physics in sound form - however in recent years he has been drawn deeply to the fretless acoustic guitar. Featured as the 'exit' track on the new UNPLUGGED UNFRETTED compilation CD, we are all eagerly awaiting new acoustic fretless guitar offerings from this immense talent."

- International Unfretted Artists

  "You are a great addition to Acoustic Player Magazine, and someone pushing the limits of the acoustic guitar. I think what you do is great. Keep up the fine work."

- Doug Jones, Editor; Acoustic Player Magazine   (USA)