Pierre Bensusan

APLR Presents: Pierre Bensusan

Wednesday, September 16th, 2026

AyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806

Doors 6PM || Event 7PM

Pierre Bensusan

“It’s like the guitar has been given free rein to play itself!”

French acoustic guitar virtuoso, vocalist, and composer Pierre Bensusan, surnamed “Mister DADGAD,” has taken his unique sound to all corners of the globe.

Winner of the Independent Music Award for his triple live album Encore, voted Best World Music Guitarist by Guitar Player Magazine readers’ poll, and winner of the Rose d’Or at the Montreux Festival for his debut album, Pierre is recognized as one of the greatest guitar players of the 21st century.

When Michael Hedges titled 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 Coryell, Tuck Andress, Tommy Emmanuel, Mark Knopfler, Andrew York, Andy Timmons, Pat Metheny, and 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 inspired by Pierre's music, as a recent studio collaboration with him on Donny Osmond’s album Start Again demonstrates.

If World Music means the fusion of traditional, contemporary, jazz, classical, and pop music, then Bensusan is one of the most eloquent World Music musicians of our time. A pianist in his beginnings and later 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 far from trivial, and it is on stage that this artist has earned his stripes, including 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 at the Independent Music Awards in the Best Live Album category. 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 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.