Janove Ottesen (born Jan Ove Ottesen, 27 August 1975) is a singer-songwriter from Bryne, Rogaland, Norway. Together with his childhood friend, Geir Zahl, he founded the alternative rock band Kaizers Orchestra, for which he serves as the band's frontman and primary composer, and occasionally plays guitar, piano, and the pump organ.
Ottesen and Zahl formed several other bands before Kaizers Orchestra became a success, and Ottesen has also formed several solo projects. Aside from being a performer, Ottesen has also served as producer for the studio recordings of Kaizers Orchestra, as well as those of other performers such as Micke from Sweden, Modan Garu, and Britt-Synnøve Johansen.
After playing with Geir Zahl as part of the two-piece group Blod, snått & juling for a number of years, the band dissolved, and Ottesen chose military service as a short-term career path, and was stationed in the northern parts of Norway.
In his free time, Ottesen would compose songs, and often performed as a guest musician at a hotel in the vicinity. In 1997, Ottesen recorded an acoustic demo which would later be leaked onto the Internet as a bootleg.
Interestingly, "Drømmereise", one of the songs from this recording, was re-used by Ottesen and Zahl as a "Wake-Up" song bumper for a Norwegian radio station, more than ten years later.Some of the material present on said demo were later recorded as part of a demo for Ottesen and Zahl's next group project, gnom, and one would even make the cut to their only studio album, Mys.
Using some songs written during this period as inspiration, Ottesen and Zahl founded Kaizers Orchestra, which would go on to be a popular group in Norway, as well as internationally, in 2000.In 2003, Ottesen announced the formation of his own solo project, whose first studio album was to come out at a later date.
In the meantime, Ottesen legally changed his given name from "Jan Ove" to "Janove"; his reason for doing this was the name he gave his email account, for which his name was contracted as "Janove", which Ottesen liked to the point of changing his name.
In 2005, Francis' Lonely Nights was released to positive reviews from Norwegian media and entered the VG-lista Top 40 album charts at the #2 spot, and stayed on the charts for six weeks on aggregate. Internationally, the album also became somewhat of an underground critical success.
In the aftermath of the album's success, Ottesen briefly mentioned plans for further studio recordings with this group, but nothing has come of this as of yet.In 2007, Ottesen composed the musical score for the theater play Det tusende hjertet.
In 2009, Ottesen toured for a short while with the group Tresko, which disbanded shortly after the end of the tour. Working in conjunction with famous Norwegian writer Tore Renberg, Ottesen is currently in the process of producing a musical theater piece based on the characters and events of Kaizers Orchestra's lyrical universe.
