Michael Hedges

Michael Alden Hedges was an American composer, acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter. Hedges attended Phillips University in Enid, OK studying classical guitar. Subsequently, from 1979 til 1982, Hedges was a composition major at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, MD. He applied his classically-trained musical background in combination with various unusual techniques to the steel-string acoustic guitar. He covered a wide range of musical styles and was considered an extremely dynamic performer in concert. He was discovered in 1981 and signed a recording contract on the Windham Hill label. Hedges' first two recordings for Windham Hill were milestones for the acoustic guitar. He wrote nearly exclusively in alternate tunings. Some of the techniques he used included slap harmonics, right hand hammer-ons, left hand melodic or rhythmic hammer-ons and pull offs, percussive slapping on the guitar, as well as unusual strummings. He also made extensive use of string damping, and was known to insist strongly on the precise duration of sounds and silences in his pieces. He was a multi-instrumentalist, playing piano, percussion, tin whistle, harmonica, and flute, among others on his albums. He was often categorized as a New Age musician, and in reaction to this, he would describe his music as "Heavy Mental" - "New Edge" - "Acoustic Thrash" - "Deep Tissue Gladiator Guitar" or "Savage Myth Guitar." A unique thing about Hedges' guitar playing was that he was left-handed but played right-handed guitars.

In 1997, Hedges died at the age of 43 in a car accident in Mendocino County, near Boonville (about 100 miles northwest of San Francisco). He was driving home from San Francisco International Airport after a Thanksgiving visit to his girlfriend in Long Island, NY. His car apparently skidded off a rain-slicked S-curve and down a cliff. Hedges was thrown from his car and appeared to have died nearly instantly. After his death, his record Oracle won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. This is "The Funky Avocado" off of his debut album Breakfast in the Field.

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