jo jena started playing the guitar at the age of 10 in berlin (the wall had just come down). he has studied composition with elliott sharp, harmony with prof. julio herrlein, jazz guitar with michael gechter and music synthesis with mike daliot. 1 of 100 guitarist with rhys chatham´s “an angel moves too fast to see”. recipient of berklee scholarship. invited to ensemble modern junior forum in 2000.
early works from 1998-2005. played with sonny edwards, philipp gropper, bill bickford, stefan goldmann, kristina tuomi, mike daliot, pantasz, willi kappich, bülent ateş, flowarea, bertram ritter, nachttierhaus, andrey shabashev, hanns höhn, benno sattler, forum improvisierter musik, momem, hassan iqbal, mike west, tilmann höhn and others. focus on solo guitar playing and independent music production (imm records) since 2018. so far, 23 recordings have been published and over 150 pieces or compositions have been registered with GEMA.
jo jena seamlessly melds a variety of influences – extended acoustic techniques, ambient guitar, and 20th century harmonic practices to deliver a captivating and fascinating listening experience.
ben monder
with this realization and recording, jo jena has opened a new window on schoenberg’s work, lifting it out of the second viennese school and bringing it into our very timbral 21st century.
elliott sharp, nyc june 2021
i really enjoyed your performances! (…) I love the sound of how all the pieces are conveyed in your handsthrough your guitar constructions! i´ve found them really powerful and hold a very affecting feeling for me. bravo! my respect JJ.
the guitarist jo jena, a student of elliott sharp, is concerned with levelling genres. he mostly performs and records solo. in doing so, he feels, as one can hear, equally indebted to the solo playing of ralph towner or egberto gismonti as well as to advanced contemporary classical music, but also to naked sounds that reverberate in space and are worth listening to – his cd ‘hydrangea’, released in 2024, was the last to feature his classically based solo playing.
gabriel aniol, jazzpodium
mit seinem kantig-soundversessenen, durch viel aussparung gekennzeichneten spiel knüpft er an die new yorker downtown-Szene um 1980 an.
frankfurter rundschau
jo jena (demonstriert) als gast wie selbstverständlich (…), dass diese musik auch verzerrte rock-riffs auf der e-gitarre zu integrieren vermag, ohne diese stilistik als feindliche übernahme erscheinen zu lassen.
wolfgang sandner, faz, rezension zu shaba, jazz im palmengarten 07/2024″
“es ist unfixiert schwebende, aber keinesfalls ätherisch-unbestimmte musik, die doch viel aufmerksamkeit einfordert. ein album von so flüchtigem wie nachdrücklichem gehalt.”
“it is unfixed, floating, but by no means ethereally indeterminate music, which nevertheless demands a great deal of attention. an album that is as fleeting as it is emphatic.”
gabriel aniol, jazzpodium, review of “jo jena & burtis knight”
jo jena 