Michael Hedges

Hedges' first two recordings for Windham Hill—Breakfast in the Field and Aerial Boundaries—were milestones for the acoustic guitar. He wrote nearly exclusively in alternate tunings. His early recordings and most of the Breakfast in the Field album were recorded on the Ken DuBourg guitar and his Martin D-28 "Barbara". Some of the techniques he used include slap harmonics (created by slapping the strings over a harmonic node), use of right hand hammer-ons (particularly on bass notes), use of the left hand for melodic or rhythmic hammer-ons and pull offs, percussive slapping on the guitar body, as well as unusual strummings. He also made extensive use of string damping as employed in classical guitar, and was known to insist strongly on the precise duration of sounds and silences in his pieces. He also played guitar variants like the harp guitar (an instrument with additional bass strings), and the TransTrem Guitar. He was a multi-instrumentalist, playing piano, percussion, tin whistle, harmonica, and flute, among others on his albums. Bassist Michael Manring contributed to nearly all of Hedges' records.

According to his manager Hilleary Burgess, Hedges was driving home from San Francisco International Airport after a visit to a girlfriend in Long Island, New York. His car apparently skidded off a rain-slicked S-curve and down a 120-foot (37 m) cliff. Hedges was thrown from his car and appeared to have died nearly instantly. His body was found a few days afterward. After his death, his album Oracle won the 1997 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.

His fourth album, a live recording called, Live on the Double Planet, was assembled from 40 of his live concerts captured from 1986 to 1987 recordings. Subsequently, Hedges earned the freedom to release his albums with both vocal and instrumental songs.

Frustrated that his published work reflected only the instrumental side of his creative output, Hedges convinced Windham Hill to release Watching My Life Go By, a 1985 studio recording of Hedges' vocal originals written over a span of five years – songs often performed at his concerts leading up to the album's release.

Hedges' Aerial Boundaries album, released in 1984, included a tribute piece for the works of acoustic guitarist Pierre Bensusan, simply entitled "Bensusan". Bensusan posthumously returned tribute on his 2001 release Intuite ("Favored Nations"), with a composition entitled "So Long Michael".

Hedges was contacted 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.

Hedges was married to flutist Mindy Rosenfeld but the couple divorced in the late 1980s. He was the father of two children, Mischa Aaron Hedges and Jasper Alden Hedges.

Hedges 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. From 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.

Michael Alden Hedges (December 31, 1953 – December 2, 1997) was an American composer, acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter.