Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!cca!ima!ism780!ed From: ed@ism780.UUCP Newsgroups: net.music Subject: Re: Windham Hill? - (nf) Message-ID: <378@ism780.UUCP> Date: Fri, 5-Oct-84 00:33:52 EDT Article-I.D.: ism780.378 Posted: Fri Oct 5 00:33:52 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 6-Oct-84 06:11:05 EDT Lines: 131 #R:rabbit:-317500:ism780:20500027:000:7182 ism780!ed Oct 4 13:13:00 1984 More on Windham Hill: Excerpted from June '84 issue of Sound Canada: Windham Hill's Unlikely Climb "From a humble birth in California in 1976, Windham Hill Records has grown to invade Canada - and the rest of the world - with its audiophile brand of mellow instrumental discs" California guitarist Will Ackerman first met George Winston by mail, and didn't quite know what to make of him. After Ackerman had started up his own small record label, he got a letter from Winston asking him if he'd consider releasing 'Ocean', and out-of-print album by Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete. After a year or so of this sort of correspondence, Ackerman made up his mind about Winston. "I really regarded him as an eccentric academician". Then they met in person. And Ackerman, while staying overnight at Winston's L.A. home, discovered that his penpal was as incredible slide guitarist. And, my God, a piano genius. Today, George Winston is the star of Will Ackerman Windham Hill Records, one of the greatest - and most unlikely - success stories in the independent recording industry in the last decade. Started up when Ackerman knew nothing about recording and producing, and employing many artists he either just stumbled upon or knew through friends and relatives, Windham Hill is now critically acclaimed as "the American ECM". Since Ackerman formed the Palo Alto, Cal. label in 1976, he's assemble a stable of offbeat instrumental artists (mostly acoustic); recorded them in unorthodox ways; and presented their work in excellent audiophile pressings in jackets bearing clean graphics and mellow-California/back-to-nature titles: 'Willow', 'Tideline', 'Autumn', and so on. After great success in the U.S., including two gold albums for George Winston on solo piano, Windham Hill's quirky brand of mellow music is now available on domestic release in Canada, via a world-wide distribution deal with A&M Records. After the first three months here, sales of the first dozen or so titles available had totalled about 25,000 - 25% higher than expected - and continue to sell relatively well, with more titles on the way. The secret of Windham Hill's appeal is hard to describe in any conventional music biz terms. "If I hear the stuff and I find it really moving, I'll have it on Windham Hill", says 34-year old label president Ackerman. "None of the normal criteria - that we've got to go with the flow of pop music - exist here". George Winston is the perfect example. His melodic, expressionistic piano compositions - which he calls "soundtracks of life" - are a bit too structured to be called jazz, and a bit too loose to be called pop. But he definitely has commercial appeal, splintered perhaps, between several markets. Classical fans are bound to to be impressed by his compositional strengths, jazz fans can enjoy the complexity and subtlety of his improvisations, and MOR pop fans will be suckers for his simple melodic hooks. Like Winston, most other Windham Hill artists play quiet, soothing music on acoustic instruments, including piano, violin, guitar and oboe. Though some of it tends towards aimless noodling, or Music to Read By, a good majority of the titles released so far in Canada contain some exciting and fresh sounds. Highlights include: the offbeat instrumental mix of Shadowfax on its debut instrumental album; the dazzling chemistry of pianist Barbara Higbie and violinist Darol Anger on Tideline; and the hypnotic acoustic guitar work of Michael Hedges on 'An Evening with Windham Hill Live', and exquisitely-recorded sampler of several label artists. Whether Windham Hill has come up with a whole new genre of music is debatable, but the company certainly has been a pioneer in the recording studio. Listen to an acoustic guitar on Windham Hill and you can almost feel the delicate scrapings of calloused fingers across crisp steel strings; on piano recordings, you can sense the pounding of hammers on strings. "The Windham Hill 'sound' is a response to the whole elaborate multi-tracking of the recording industry", says Ackerman. "It's a pure, intimate, proximate music." It's no surprise that Ackerman is a recording studio maverick, considering his start in the business. Back in the mid-70's, after studying English and History at Stanford University, he started up his own building company. While doing some construction work for Chris Strachwitz, head of Arhoolie and Kicking Mule record companies, he simply hung around and asked a lot of questions, and picked up the basics of record production. After releasing his own first solo guitar album with funding help from several supportive friends and fans, he started up Windham Hill, and started to produce other artists - learning by doing. It was Ackerman's first recording engineer, Scott Saxon, who first showed him the recording technique that has become standard on Windham Hill guitar albums. Saxon took a couple of AKG mikes and crammed them right up next to the hole of Ackerman's guitar. The resulting recording didn't capture "concert" sound, but certainly was refreshingly intimate - complete with all the noisy squeaks and squawks of fingertips sliding along brand-new strings. "I really feel those (noises) are part of the performance", says Ackerman. "They add a proximity to the artist, and that's been very appealing to a lot of people." On piano recordings, Ackerman similarly places his main microphones unusually close to the keyboard and inside hammers - about 8 inches away. "You get overtones and resonances that are unprecedented", he says. "They also give you a tremendous amount of stereo seperation." Ackerman will also usually place several "ambient" mikes in various positions around the studio to help create a partial illusion to a live setting. "In listening to George Winston, you are sitting in front of a large, open stage, right in the front row", he says. "With pianist Liz Story, you're in a 300-seat room in about the 20th row." When it comes to pressings, Windham Hill has a longtime reputation for excellence in the U.S. that should continue in Canada, as all titles are being pressed at Toronto's Cineram Records on super-quiet KC-600 audiophile vinyl. This special formulation (it has no carbon black added and hence it is a translucent purple colour) should be familiar to pop fans who've bought recent albums by Supertramp, The Police and Joe Jackson. As for the future, says Ackerman, Windham Hill is continuing to sign new artists, to re-release old classics on a subsidiary label, and to continue its use of digital recording, and the release of titles on compact discs. To plug all of his various wares, Ackerman is using a rather unorthodox print advertisement that simply lists several categories of music - Jazz, Folk, Classical and Rock - each with a large slash drawn through it. "That's the most positive statement we could come up with", says Ackerman. "We didn't set out to create a new genre of music, but when you consider that all our major retail accounts have established their own "Windham Hill" bins, it seems that we have come up with something unique. Ed Lycklama decvax!cca!ima!ed