Donald James Ross, or Don Ross, (born November 19, 1960) is a Canadian fingerstyle guitarist. He is the only person to win the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship twice (1988 and 1996). His album Huron Street reached the top ten on the Billboard New-age chart. Biography Ross was born in Montreal, Quebec to Scottish and Mi'kmaq parents. He studied composition at the music department of York University in Toronto with David Mott, James Tenney and Phil Werren. After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music in 1983, he studied philosophy at St. Hyacinth College and Seminary in Granby, Massachusetts while living at San Damiano Friary in Holyoke, Massachusetts and then started his novitiate for the Canadian custody of the Conventual Franciscans of Immaculate Conception Province at St. Francis Friary in Staten Island, NY. He decided to leave that pursuit and become a musician. In 1986 Ross produced and published his first album, Kehewin, on cassette, and became a full-time musician. He performed as a duo with his wife, singer Kelly McGowan, in 1986 and 1987, and then in a trio called Harbord Trio with her and violinist Oliver Schroer. At the same time he was member of a New Age jazz quartet called Eye Music. He composed music for several theatre productions in Toronto dealing with First Nations life in Canada, such as The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (York University, 1989), Dreaming Beauty (Inner Stage Theatre, 1990) and Big Buck City (Cahoots Theatre, 1991). He has also composed music for the CBC radio serial Dead Dog Café. In 1987 some of his compositions were played by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. His first place win, after two previous attempts, in the 1988 American Walnut Valley Festival earned him a contract with Duke Street Records, Toronto, where he published his next two albums, 1989's Bearing Straight and 1990's Don Ross. Since then he has released several mostly instrumental CDs, though some of them feature him as a singer. He published three instructional videos, several single transcriptions and a book with nine of his pieces, and worked with the magazine Canadian Musician. At the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals he won a prize with his wife Kelly, and in 1996 he won his second first prize at the Walnut Valley Festival. Since 1997 he guides the Don Ross Cannington Guitar Weekend, a guitar workshop. In 2001 his first wife Kelly McGowan died, and