Pierre Bensusan is looking back on 50 years of performance as he brings his tour of North America to Qualicum Beach on June 29.
Also known as "Mr. DADGAD" for his mastery of the unique guitar tuning style, Bensusan is considered a superstar in Europe. He recently completed a series of concerts that saw him perform across much of China, where he played a mix of large venues and small clubs.
“I love smaller venues. I love all kinds of venues," Bensusan said. "I mean, obviously guitar is an instrument of intimacy and so whenever I play even in a small venue sometimes I play unplugged with no microphone.”
His show at the Rotary House will be his first visit to the Parksville Qualicum Beach area.
“In fact, this is my first ever Canadian tour. I used to play in Canada, you know, once in a while. I was in tour in the United States and then cross the border to play a couple shows in Canada,” Bensusan said. “I’ve played many times in Canada, but never did a proper tour.”
Across five decades of recording and performance, he has won acclaim for his fusion of traditional, contemporary, jazz, classical and pop music.
Bensusan studied piano from the age of six before he started to teach himself the guitar at 11 years old, and found the skills he had learned transferred.
He said his piano teacher taught him "everything I needed to know on how to hear music, to listen to music and to respect music and to treat my body well so that my muscles can respond to whatever demands."
The piano is great because it really helps you to stretch to get agility with the fingers.”
Bensusan quit school at 16, was discovered by a record producer at 17 and soon enough he was on the road, touring with another musician and performing in different European countries.
His recorded his first album, Près de Paris, as a teenager and won the The Grand Prix/Rose d’Or of the Montreux Festival in Switzerland the same year. Since those first performances in 1974, he has sold half a million albums and given thousands of concerts across the world.
Bensusan won an Independent Music Award for his triple live album Encore and was voted Best World Music Guitarist by a Guitar Player Magazine reader’s poll.
He grew up in a home full of music and spent his first four years in French Algeria before his family was part of 1 million people who left the country for France after independence in 1962.
“There is no life without music," Bensusan said. "Not a day would go by when there was no music at home. My father was a huge music lover. Music was very important for his soul and my mother was singing lullabies in Arabic, in Spanish, in French."
The family left everything and moved to Paris — they had to recreate their lives in a new place, he added.
"I feel like I am at home everywhere, really,” he said. “I am at home wherever I feel there are good creative people. I am at home where I can share the music with people.”
Now 67, Bensusan said he feels a sense of "vertigo" when he thinks about the five decades of his career.
“To look backwards like this, it feels like every single show intend to happen the way it happened,” he added.
His concert at the Rotary House (211 Fern Rd W) starts at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Tickets are available online at events.humanitix.com/pierre-bensusan-live-at-rotary-house-qualicum-beach-bc.
