Michael Hedges

Michael Alden Hedges (December 31, 1953 – December 2, 1997) was an American composer, acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter. He is known for having pioneered percussive fingerstyle guitar, the influence of which can now be heard in the compositions and playing of many guitarists.

Hedges' life in music began in his hometown of Enid, Oklahoma, where he flirted with various instruments before focusing on flute and guitar. He eventually enrolled at Phillips University in Enid to study classical guitar, but more importantly, to study under the tutelage of his compositional mentor, E. J. Ulrich. Subsequently Hedges was a composition major at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland who 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. Hedges made ends meet playing and singing in pubs and restaurants in the Baltimore Metro area during his tenure at Peabody. In 1976 to 1977 he played electric guitar and flute for a local jazzy folk rock group called Lotus Band, which he left to start performing solo acoustic. In 1980, he made plans to move to California to study music at Stanford University. Hedges was contracted in February 1981 by William Ackerman who heard Hedges performing at The Varsity Theater in Palo Alto and immediately (using a napkin from The New Varsity) signed Hedges to a recording contract on the Windham Hill label.[1] He was married to flautist Mindy Rosenfeld but the couple divorced in the late 1980s.