Artists:Eric Hansen

Eric Hansen was born October 6, 1956, in Chicago, but spent his early childhood in Highland, Indiana. By the time he was 12, his family had moved to Chicago, where he studied guitar. After high school, he attended Chicago Musical College, where he studied voice and classical guitar. He left the conservatory two years later and joined Chicago’s Free Street Theater, a traveling performing arts outreach program.

After four years with Free Street, performing, writing songs, and working in schools, hospitals, and communities, he won a major role in "I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road." The show eventually took him to New York City. There, he pursued a career onstage, worked in touring musicals, did bit parts in soaps: The Guiding Light, Search for Tomorrow, One Life to Live - and did Theatre by the Sea in Portsmouth. He toured Europe with "Annie Get Your Gun" and landed the title role in "Volodya/Russian Hero" at the eclectic, world-renown LaMaMa Experimental Theatre Company. By 1995, he had decided on a career as a solo singer-songwriter and found his music was well accepted. He won two Back Stage Bistro Awards from New York critics. In addition, Eric worked as a visiting musician for Hospital Audiences Inc. and soon made it to the top of HAI's roster as a most-requested performer.

In spite of his success as a solo artist, Eric found he was performing sick all the time. In June 1997, he was diagnosed with Alpha 1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, which destroys lung function (He has now 38% lung capacity).

Eric's dynamic performances belie the fact that he is living with Alpha-1. In his vocal quality, no compromise can be detected.

The condition, however, meant a lifestyle change - pacing himself, no more smoky bars. His next "gig" would reveal another side of his talent, nurtured by the children of New York's Hudson Guild. There, he wrote and taught the music curriculum for 140 pre-kindergarten children in the poor and working-class neighborhood of Chelsea. "It was one of those life-changing experiences," he said. He discovered he had another gift – a talent for working with children. However, in 1999, after a bout with pneumonia, he decided to move to Arizona in search of better air quality, but not before recording "I Am I" with the Hudson Guild children for his CD Real Slow. The title song reflects a turning point in his life. "I was thinking about death because I was feeling so bad. I had gone through such sickness and pain. I remember the moment that I read the article about the Indian Ocean, (to which he refers in the lyrics), and that's the moment that I chose to fight. I stood up and said, “I want to swim in the Indian Ocean.".