Spotlight: Douglas Hensley – guitarist

It is my pleasure to introduce the first artist in the new Spotlight category on Classical Guitar Canada: Douglas Hensley. The Spotlight category will showcase Canadian guitarists, luthiers, and composers. The general idea will be to present the artist’s biography, an interview, and contact information. I’ll be starting out on the West Coast and then moving east either in person or via email or video chat.

I’ve had the privilege of working with Mr. Hensley at the Victoria Conservatory for some time now and I’m very pleased to have him in the Spotlight. A man of many talents and interests, here’s a Canadian guitarist you need to know about. Enjoy the interview, biography, links, and contact info. Check it out, conversations on everything from Frank Zappa to Elliot Carter! Also, a new work by Frank Martin?

An interview with Douglas Hensley by Bradford Werner of Classical Guitar Canada (http://www.classicalguitarcanada.ca). Interview: September 13th, 2010.

Artist Submitted Biography:

Douglas Hensley, guitarist and lutenist, moved to Victoria in early 1995 after marrying Canadian guitarist and composer Heather-Marie DeRome. He grew up in Kentucky, USA, but came of age musically in San Francisco, where he received B.M and M.M degrees in guitar performance as well as instruction in early music performance practices. He founded and directed chamber ensembles such as Drifting Leaves (flute, viola, guitar) and the Lennon-Stravinsky Quartet (soprano, flute, harp, guitar), and made guest appearances with ensembles such as Earplay, Composers, Inc., Composers Chamber Players, the Oakland Chamber Symphony, Bay Area Youth Opera, and Marzena. He co-founded and co-directed the contemporary music ensemble ISKRA with conductor Kent Nagano, with whom he recorded Frank Martin’s Poèmes de la mort. ISKRA activities included a series of programs devoted to works from Japan, Korea, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, all of which included world premieres. He has appeared in programs of the Victoria, San Francisco, Berkeley and Marin Symphonies, and was soloist in the Civic Orchestra of Victoria’s performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.

Mr Hensley has significantly enriched the guitar’s repertoire by commissioning and premiering over 70 works by Jean Coulthard, Murray Adaskin, Henk Badings, Hans Holewa, Rudolf Kelterborn, Larry Polansky, and many others. His audiences have included such composers as R. Murray Schafer, Toru Takemitsu, Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Toshio Hosokawa, John A. Lennon and Frank Zappa, and he has recorded a wide variety of pieces for classical and electric guitars on several labels. With Kay Cochran of the Victoria Symphony, he has formed the ensemble Ten-String Music (viola & guitar), which performs in the Greater Victoria area.

Mr Hensley’s activity in the field of early music performance includes 19th Century guitar, vihuela, viola de pendola, various medieval and renaissance lutes, gittern, archlute, and theorbo. He has benefited from the guidance of such early music luminaries as Margriet Tindemans, Crawford Young, Paul O’Dette, Robert Barto, Stephen Stubbs, and Grant Herreid. He is, with soprano Elizabeth MacIsaac, cofounder of the Continuum Consort, which released the CD Si je languis. He has also appeared with Anima (with whom he recorded the CD La rosa enflorece), Ensemble Laude (with whom he made the live CD recording Pleasure, Pomp and Power), Les Violes de Ste Colombe, and the Victoria Symphony’s Festival Baroque Ensemble.

Although Mr Hensley’s introduction to classical Persian music occurred years before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, it wasn’t until the mid 1980′s that he discovered, in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, a number of high caliber Iranian musicians who had emigrated to the States. He studied santur with Ms Mahvash Guerâmi, oud with Akbar Mohseni, and repertoire with Mahmoud Zolfonun. He also had the amazing good fortune to study for several months with the very important and influential târ and setâr master Mohammad Rezâ Lotfi, which propelled him into ever more serious pursuit of this art form. After receiving a Hertz Travelling Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley, having been denied a visa to study in Irân, he moved to Paris for a year to study târ with Dâriush Talâ’i, setâr with Rezâ Ghâsemi, and ney and voice with Hossein Omoumi. In California he was a member of the ensemble Delnavâzân, and in Victoria he performs regularly with the ensemble Daryâ and teaches târ, setâr and santur.

Mr Hensley is currently on the faculty of the Victoria Conservatory of Music, where he teaches guitar, lute, mandolin, and târ. In October 2006 and June of 2007 he traveled to South Korea with the expanded contemporary version of the Continuum Consort (voice, flute, viola, guitar) to premiere works commissioned from several Korean women composers by the Pan International Music Festival and the Delos Collective, and a work commissioned from Vancouver composer Dorothy Chang by the B.C. Arts Council.

Links:

• Douglas Hensley at the Victoria Conservatory of Music
• The Continuum Consort with Douglas Hensley
• Douglas Hensley tags at Classical Guitar Canada
• Douglas Hensley tags at Guitar Victoria

Contact information:

• E-mail: hd1dh@telus.net

Do you have something to add to this article or some kind words for the excellent Mr. Hensley? Want to say hello? Leave a comment below!