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Hometown performance is special for Linstead By Dominik Kurek OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF He has performed the world over, but for Oakville's award-winning guitarist, Johannes Linstead, his hometown is always the most difficult place to perform. "It's a lot more pressure. I don't get stage fright no matter where we play. We've played for royalty, we've played in the Middle East, we've done the top jazz events in the U.S.," the Latin-guitarist said. "Performing in Oakville, I really want to make sure this is a show everyone will remember. It's a little bit more pressure to put on a special show for everybody. Part of the audience will be people I know or haven't seen for years, or family and friends. I'm looking forward to making new fans and entertaining the ones who have been around for a long time." The life-long Oakville resident will be bringing his Latin-guitar styling to the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts stage when he performs a concert on Saturday. "The audience can expect to be really entertained," Linstead said. "The guys and myself really like to move around. We like to have a lot of fun on stage. I think that transcends into the audience. They get caught into that energy." Linstead, a Juno Awardnominated musician, frequently invites his audiences to participate by encouraging them to come up on stage and dance, or to shout out and clap along to the music. Despite the action, a seated thea fusion of various musical styles, such as Spanish, Afro-Cuban, Middle Eastern and Latin American. His love of music began at a young age, saying he always loved watching and listening to his mother play the guitar. "... Even though she wasn't a virtuoso or anything -- it always just fascinated me," he said. His sister later was given a guitar, but having little interest in it, gave it to him when he was eight years old. "I was quite excited. It was an electric guitar too," Linstead said. A T.A. Blakelock High School graduate, Linstead learned to play the guitar at High Note Music Centre in Oakville, and was taught such styles as classical as well as rock and jazz. So where did the Latin come from? "My father lived in the Caribbean prior to me being born. When I was a kid, I would hear stories about his time in the Caribbean. They always fascinated me. They captured my interest," he said. "In the winters we travelled down south. Coming from Canada where its cold, dreary, snowy and then going to these tropical islands where there are beaches and people are swimming in the ocean, palm trees, the sun is shining, and it's hot, that really left an impression on me." The people in the Caribbean also did not have many luxuries either, Linstead noted, but what they did have really impressed the youngster. "There's only a few things these people have in their lives and one of the big things is music," he said. Though he studied predominantly classical and rock music, the Latin-style of music really stuck with him. "I was always writing in different styles. Even when I was a teenager, I was writing a lot of pieces for Spanish guitar. To me, it wasn't really a switch over, it was more a decision of this is where I was to focus my creativity." That creativity led him to write some original compositions and then perform them at local restaurants. Receiving some fanfare, he made a CD and when people started buying his music, he formed a group and began playing at local festivals and with that came more CD sales. "Then I thought people really seem to like the music, so I decided to send my CD off to different record companies in Canada and in the U.S. I got a lot of rejections but one company was really interested in California and I ended up signing with them." His first album with the record label sold 100,000 copies. "It was quite a shock," he said of the time. "The album made it onto the Billboard music charts, which is the coveted music chart. It was all surreal. Doing instrumental music, Latin stuff, I didn't know what kind of audience there was going to be for it. It was a surprise -- I was starting to make a really good living at it." See Music page 23 Artscene 21 · Friday, January 20, 2012 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.insideHALTON.com submitted photo ready to play: Award-winning musician Johannes Linstead will perform for his home crowd on Saturday. atre also helps set the mood, notes Linstead. "Seating allows the audience to really relax and listen to the music, to really hear what's going on," he said. "There's going to be songs where people will just want to sit back, maybe even close their eyes, and just imagine that maybe they're in Spain or somewhere in the Caribbean, letting the music take them away." Linstead, a musician of German and English descent, has developed