"Stephen's music speaks loudly of ambition, imagination, nous, and harmonic adventure yet teemed with the sort of tuneful realisation that swells the heart" 
– Rob Adams, The Herald 

Graeme Stephen was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and has been playing guitar since the age of 9. Today he leads and contributes to a multitude of musical projects in Scotland and overseas, playing a wide array of styles from free improvised jazz to Scottish folk. Stephen’s peerless improvisational skills and talent for composition make him one of Scotland’s most exciting and prodigious musical talents. He is a very unusual jazz guitarist in that he is as skilled and comfortable playing in a virtuoso way over standards and chord changes, as he is heading into completely free improvised soundscapes. His playing shows the influence of all the great contemporary guitarists Metheny, Schofield, through the sonic inventiveness of  Bill Frisell as well as into the more conceptual and fragmented worlds of James Blood Ulmer, Marc Ribot and David Torn. Stephen's instrument is in a sense more than a guitar, as he seamlessly uses loop pedals and effects as a fully integrated part of his musical language. As a composer Stephen writes music that reflects his diverse musical interests, but with a gift for melodic and rhythmic accessibility amongst the more expansive free form colours. He has written a significant body of extraordinary film music, with his scores to the early masterpieces of 20s German cinema.

Nosferatu is the mother of all vampire films and provides rich source material for Graeme Stephen's original score. The film still retains its power to spook after all these years

"The frightful shadow of the vampire slides up a staircase to the reverberating strains of electric guitar … The grainy images flickering on screen are vintage, but the musical accompaniment is as contemporary as you can get: welcome to the world of guitarist Graeme Stephen, a widely respected guitarist on the Scottish jazz scene who in recent years has been turning his compositional talents to “live” scores which he and colleagues perform for silent movies" – The Scotsman

Listen to Graeme's album Vantage Points: