Canadian fingerstyle guitarist Don Ross, noted for his use of extended technique performs at the West End Cultural Centre on Friday January 25th, 2013. Don is the only person to twice win the U.S. National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship (1988 and 1996).

Born into a musically rich home (Don’s dad is an operatically-trained singer), Don Ross began playing publicly in his hometown of Montreal at the age of 15. Inspired by the music of legendary Canadian singer/guitarist Bruce Cockburn, Don wrote his first strong instrumental tunes for solo guitar around this time.

Don eventually studied Music at Toronto’s York University. After graduation in 1988, Don entered and won the U.S. National Fingerstyle Guitar Competition. This earned him a fair amount of media attention back home in Canada, and within days he was scouted to record for Toronto-based independent record label Duke Street Records.

He recorded his debut for the label, Bearing Straight, which was released in 1989. Two more recordings for the label followed, 1990’s Don Ross and 1993’s Three Hands. Don then signed with Columbia/Sony and recorded three more CDs for that label: This Dragon Won’t Sleep in 1995, Wintertide in 1996 and Loaded. Leather. Moonroof. in 1997.

In the meantime, Don won the Fingerstyle competition in the USA for a second time in 1996. To this day, he is still the only player to have won the competition twice!

Signing with Narada Records in 1999, Don released his first completely solo-guitar CD, Passion Session. Recorded in a series of overnight sessions in Berlin’s Passionskirche (The Church of the Passion), the CD has gone on to top many of the “all-time best acoustic guitar recordings” lists in publications like Acoustic Guitar Magazine.

In 2010-2011 Don was hired as a Dalhousie University professor teaching history of guitar and techniques, while still travelling extensively for music. He did not renew his contract for the following year due to high demand for concert appearances around the world.

Don is currently touring music from his 2012 CandyRat Records release titled Upright and Locked Position. In addition to acoustic guitar, Don also plays electric guitar, slide dobro and lapsteel guitar, voice, piano, keyboards, bass guitar and drums.

Don Ross website