Growing up in Northern Virginia, Wytold (William Wytold Lebing) took private lessons in classical cello repertoire and participated in school and regional youth orchestras. Wytold always dreamt of going to college to study cello performance but was held back by carpal tunnel syndrome, cause by an over-zealous and technically unsound approach to the instrument. After a 1.5 year hiatus, Wytold reintroduced himself to playing music by learning folk songs on the acoustic guitar. Guitar strumming and finger-picking gradually reintroduced Wytold's fingers and wrists to the motions involved in performing and also instilled a new soul and passion for heart-felt musicianship and the musical experience (rather than technical demands of difficult passages).
Wytold's early original songs consisted of simple guitar chords, simple rhythms, and introspective yet quirky lyrics. He performed some of those early songs around Johns Hopkins University with his band "Loosely Affiliated," whose glory days ranged from playing inside the student library to receiving an award from a student talent show. In the meantime, Wytold studied mathematics and philosophy while drawing creative inspiration from rock climbing trips in West Virginia and California ("American Dreams", in its original guitar+vocal format, was written on airline napkins flying back from a 3 week climbing stint in Joshua Tree). Before leaving Baltimore to study History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, Wytold developed an insatiable appetite for practicing and song-writing. Soon he seriously revisited the acoustic cello and rewrote many guitar parts for rhythmic cello bowing. He tested the new cello+vocal arrangements at open mic nights around Pittsburgh, culminating in a packed coffee house with lighters raised in the air while Wytold performed a medley of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" and Kelly Clarkson's "Since You Been Gone".
Shortly thereafter, Wytold took a long break from guitar playing and singing to fully devote himself to the cello (he's still on that break). He began collaborating and songwriting with Between Liberties (previously known as Colorful Speech), whose recording of "In the City" received airplay on national public radio station 91.3 WYEP. Just before receiving two Master's Degrees from Pitt (one in Philosophy, one in History and Philosophy of Science), Wytold taught himself to use a loop pedal and to play the shoulder-strapped six-string electric cello. His mathematical background helps him visualize and manipulate the different cello layers when composing and performing, and also provided a foundation to study audio engineering when recording and mixing "When Fulvio Finds Celeste" and to explore using MIDI commands to trigger looping functions in computer software Ableton Live.
