Born in Vancouver, coming from a musical and somewhat intellectual background, Edward began taking music very seriously from about the age of 12 when he got his first guitar. To make a long story short, it didn't take Ed long before he was a pretty hot rock guitarist, improviser, and composer burning the fire of his youth and pent up expression.

Edward's mainstay was virtuosic and progressive hard blues-rock... although he ventured well into traditional and fusion jazz also. In his early twenties Ed found himself singing and playing rather commercial music in bars for a number of years simply as a way to earn a decent living and support his growing craving for world travel. This situation, while giving him a tremendous amount of LIVE experience, finally drove him over the edge and to a move which had him entirely reject commerciality and electronics in music.

In 1988, off he went to India and finally spent there more than 5 years over a 10 year period involved entirely with the study of the sitar and Hindustani classical music. Much of this time was spent receiving private tuition from the world's primier sitarist Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee.

In the early '90's Edward began performing on the sitar, North Indian classical and World fusion 'repertoire'. However it was also during this period that Edward was introduced to the oud, which on first hearing was fixed firmly on his list of things to learn. Later in this decade Edward began experimenting with, creating, and playing steel-string acoustic fretless guitars.

No doubt, at this point, Edward's musical (and otherwise) life was becoming rather complex and complicated... however by the mid-'90's he managed to permanently leave the electric guitar behind him. He moved to Central Europe and enjoyed a few years of creating small acoustic "ethno" groups, recording, and gigging. This began to change in the year 2000 when Edward began seriously to design and build original instruments.

Instrument building and instrument playing, although very connected, are in fact not very compatible activities. Therefore Edward's life since Y2K has alternated between periods of building and playing. Not fully realising why he was doing it - rather he seemed to be 'lead' by something to continue with one after another building projects... each leading to the next. All of which seems to have finally lead him to the creation of the instrument he uses now as his only vehicle - the instrument he calls: "the Ragmakamtar". This is essentially a hybrid of a sarod, an oud, and a fretless acoustic guitar.

In 2003 Edward went to Crete to live for some months near Ross Daly's music center. Ross inspired Edward to begin a serious and indepth study of Ottoman classical music. This new journey lead Edward to acquire a study grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to study oud in Istanbul with Necati Celik for six months. Ultimately it was also during this time in Istanbul where Edward make close contact with Faruk Turunz (master luthier).

Thanks to the generosity of Faruk Turunz and his masterful team, Edward's skill and vision as an original instrument designer and builder increased immeasurably... so much so that Edward was convinced by Siberian recording artist Vladiswar Nadishana in 2008 to build for him a very complex instrument similar in design to Edward's Ragmakamtar.

In 2009 Edward fullfilled a 15 year old dream to spend an extended period of time in Cairo, Egypt immersed in the study and research of Arabic oud and classical music.

Since 2000 Edward has released six albums most of which are available on cdbaby.com.

(c) 2010 edwardpowell.com