Paul Winter: Discontent with new-age label
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., July 19, 1998) -- He duets with wolves in the woods and whales on the seas. He schleps tons of recording equipment into the Grand Canyon to capture nature's ideal acoustic setting. And when he's not trekking around the globe in search of a new sublime experience, he haunts the vaults in that man-made acoustic marvel, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, where he is artist- in-residence.

With a resume that includes all the above, and a style he has variously described as "Earth Music" and "Living Music," it's no wonder that Paul Winter's recordings wind up in the new-age bin -- not necessarily such a bad place to be, as the category has rewarded him with not just one but two Grammy Awards for best new-age album, and five other Grammy nominations in new-age categories.

And while Winter isn't exactly discontent with the "new-age" designation, he'd be just as happy if it went away of its own accord.

"I think musicians object to labels if they think that they're going to dissuade anybody from listening to them," said Winter, in a recent phone interview from his home in northwestern Connecticut. Winter will be bringing his group, the Paul Winter Consort, to the National Music Center in Lenox, on Saturday night, July 25, at 8. For information call 637-4718.

"When you're locked into any kind of category you worry about that," said Winter, who has been performing and developing his particular variety of jazz-influenced world-music since the early-'60s.

"We've been in the new-age category in the retail marketing of the record business for about ten years or more, after years in which we had a dozen other labels applied to us," said Winter.

"I don't think much about it. It's out of our control. If I thought that people would then assume that our music is like a lot of the other music in that category, then I would have a problem with it."

As Winter points out, new-age is a broad, catch-all category into which Grammy-nominated artists as disparate as rock star Peter Gabriel, world- beat vocalist Yusef Lateef, jazz-fusion ensemble Shadowfax, and Celtic singer Enya have been lumped together.

"If people know it's eclectic and capable of including musicians who have roots in other traditions, then it doesn't bother me," said Winter, whose own musical resume is the very incarnation of musical eclecticism.

Raised in small-town Pennsylvania, Winter got his musical start studying saxophone, clarinet and classical piano. His interest soon turned to playing in bands, including a brass band, a Dixieland band and a nine- piece dance band.

He formed the Paul Winter Sextet while still at Northwestern University, and shortly after his cool-jazz and bebop-influenced group won the 1961 Intercollegiate Jazz Festival, it was signed to Columbia Records by legendary A&R man John Hammond.

The ensemble soon became the first student jazz group sent abroad by the U.S. State Department, and embarked on a six-month, 23-country tour throughout Latin America in 1962. It was an ear-opening experience, exposing the musicians to sounds of other lands, particularly those of Brazil, which was in the midst of the Bossa Nova revolution.

It had a profound effect on Winter, who on subsequent visits went on to record several Brazilian-influenced albums, including "Jazz Meets the Bossa Nova," "The Sound of Ipanema" and "Rio."

While in subsequent years Winter would become best known for his nature- influenced recordings and performances, including "Icarus," "Missa Gaia," "Wolf Eyes" and "Common Ground" -- his first album to interweave recorded sounds from nature with his ensemble's instrumental voices -- he never lost his passion for the Brazilian sound.

"I live with a continual wish to revisit anything Brazilian," said Winter. "I lived there for about a year in the Sixties, and I've been back many times. I love the music and the culture. It's really my second home."

On that first trip to Rio in 1962, Winter met a young guitarist named Oscar Castro-Neves. The two became friends and musical partners, thus beginning a lifelong collaboration that sees its ultimate fulfillment in "Brazilian Days," a brand-new duet album by the two friends, due out this week on Winter's Living Music label, distributed by Windham Hill.

The album revisits songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim and other popular writers of the Bossa Nova era. "Oscar and I have been talking about doing a duet album for twenty years, and we finally did it," said Winter, who, true to form, recorded many of his soprano saxophone parts in his favorite spot at the Grand Canyon, which he has christened "Bach's Canyon."

Rather than feeling a kinship with touchy-feely, new-age ear candy, Winter identifies strongly with a particularly New England-oriented lineage he traces to Henry David Thoreau and Charles Ives.

"Thoreau played the flute, and he used to talk about echoes," said Winter. "And Ives once said of Thoreau that he was a great musician not because he played the flute but because he didn't have to go to Boston to hear the symphony."

"I draw deep inspiration from their lives and their work, and I feel Pete Seeger is very much a part of that lineage as well," said Winter, who produced "Pete" by Seeger, which won a Grammy for best traditional folk album in 1997.

"Our music is quite different than the music of any of those people, but it has similar aspirations: to celebrate the earth and celebrate life and really to explore the ways of deepening our connection to the larger family of life."

If you would like to purchase Paul Winter CD's on-line, please click on the SoundStone logo to the right.

[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on July 24, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]