Pierre Bensusan

After releasing Azwan, an album about our oneness and interconnectivity in the midst of a unifying global crisis, French-Algerian guitarist, vocalist, and composer, Pierre Bensusan is celebrating the 50th anniversary of his career.

When Michael Hedges titles one of his compositions Bensusan, you know that the inspiration behind it must be special and Pierre Bensusan certainly is. Guitarists from Leo Kottke to Larry Corryel, to Tuck Andress, Tommy Emmanuel, Mark Knopfler, Julian Lage, Andrew York, Andy Timmons, to Steve Lukather...have sung his praises, and Steve Vai released three Bensusan albums on his label Favored Nations. And it's not just guitarists who are so inspired by Pierre's music, as a recent studio collaboration with him on Donny Osmond's latest album Start Again goes to show.

If World Music means the fusion of traditional, contemporary, jazz, classical, and pop music, the Bensusan is one of the most eloquent World Music musicians of our time. A pianist in his beginnings the self-taught on the guitar, the originality of his style makes him one of today's greatest guitarists and composers for the instrument. Also called "The Prince of DADGAD", his story is farm from trivial and it is on stage the this artist has earned his stripes: among others, the Rose d'Or of the Montreux Festival, and being elected Best Guitarist of World Music by the readers of Guitar Player Magazine. His triple album Encore won the Grand Prix of the Independent Music Awards in the category Best Live Album. Since his first performances in 1974 in France, the guitarist has sold half a million albums and given thousands of concerts around the globe, both solo and through numerous collaborations.

Pierre Bensusan is an adventurer of unusual lands. His almost "sacred" music is an intimate and orchestral hymn, a solo crossing on a multi-shell Lowden guitar subjected to the natural elements with sound molecules and finger pulp on an ebony fingerboard for open tuning - a unique and transparent technique, under the fingers of an adventurous pilgrim.