Canadian New Age guitarist Erik Mongrain was born on April 12, 1980, in Montreal, and got his start as a musician on the streets of his hometown, where he developed a playing style he called "lap tapping" that involved tapping chords on the strings of his instrument while holding it flat in his lap. He appeared on Lynda Lemay's 2005 album Un Paradis Quelque Part and wrote two songs for it. In 2006, he went back to playing the guitar in a more conventional manner. He released his first album, Fates, on Prophase Music on June 26, 2007. His second album, Equilibrium, followed on October 28, 2008. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi