he reimagined “My Wild Love” from a drunken stomp into a zen piano koan and his take on “Bird of Prey,” based on a Jim Morrison poem aspires to the imagery Morrison wrote. I think this may be the least well-received Winston album by his fans, but I thought there were a couple tracks on here that attained true interpretive brilliance and revealed the depth and breadth of George Winston’s vision. And so it goes throughout Autumn as the pianist unfolds his melodies in what sounds like spontaneous reverie.ģ Night Divides the Day-The Music of the Doors “Woods,” with its quasi-classical arpeggios, seems to dance in the air. The opening “Colors/Dance” rings with the open clarity of the Montana plains where Winston grew up. This is the album that started it all, although it’s techically his second album, it was his first on Windham Hill Records. But whether playing the challenging inside-the-piano effects of his “Forbidden Forest” or the inviting themes of “Cloudy This Morning,” George Winston’s gifted lyricism remains true. I liked his earlier albums, but on Forest, George Winston went deeper, extending his ringing, open-air, melodic sound, embracing the minimalist influences of Steve Reich on “Tamarack Pines,” the jazz harmonies of the late-organist Larry Young‘s “The Cradle” and the slow ragtime of William Bolcom‘s “Graceful Ghost.
All of Winston’s albums have been reissued in recent years with bonus tracks and illuminating liner notes from the artist.įorest is the CD that brought me into the Winston fold. You can hear his show tonight, August 14.
#George winston autumn album series
But when he plays inside those limitations, George Winston moves outside the box.Īs part of Echoes Then & Now series in our 20th Anniversary celebration, we’re featuring the music of George Winston. Nothing wrong with limitations, everyone’s got them.
With one exception, he’s less successful playing their music, which often reveals his own limitations as a pianist. He occasionally goes off and pays tribute to these artists, doing entire albums of Vince Guaraldicompositions, for instance. Winston is an eclectic artists who cites The Doors and Tangerine Dream, Fats Waller and John Coltrane, Philip Aaberg and Steve Reich as influences. It launched a million solo pianists, yet none of them has attained George Winston’s almost transcendent marriage of melody and atmosphere. Winston took the lyricism and mood that made Keith Jarrett‘s music so popular and refined them into what he called “folk piano” on his first Windham Hill album, Autumn.
Praised with five and four star reviews from Downbeat and Rolling Stone for his debut album, Autumn, in 1980, he’s since come to be synonymous with shlock for many critics. His impressionistic solo piano albums came to define the Windham Hill sound and he’s among the first musicians most people think of when you say, New Age. George Winston is both loved and reviled.
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