Early Records of Windham Hill

Last updated February 5, 1999

Windham Hill, starting in 1976, released a collection of records over the next 15 years that is unmatched in quality by any other record label. The only other label that comes close is ECM. On this page I will go through the records that they released and comment on them.

In the Beginning
Windham Hill started out as a single person: William Ackerman. From the beginning and until his departure from the company in 1990, Will was the musical director of Windham Hill. Every artist who recorded for Windham Hill was approved by Will Ackerman. Will also produced many of the early recordings for Windham Hill, meaning that he controlled what music was recorded and what it sounded like. In addition, Will wrote and recorded some of the best music that the company released. For more details about William Ackerman and his recordings, this link leads to another of my pages where I talk about Will's records on their own... Click here...

The similarities with Manfred Eicher, owner of ECM records and producer of nearly every one of ECM's releases are striking. ECM is an older record label (dating back to the late 1960s) and, although ECM releases a range of music, most of their records are classified as jazz. Will said some time ago that he modeled his album covers after ECM's. The overlap between Windham Hill and ECM extends to the music. Some Windham Hill artists have recorded for both labels (Mark Isham, David Torn, Paul McCandless). Like Will Ackerman founded and ran Windham Hill, Manfred Eicher founded and ran ECM records (one key difference, Will left Windham Hill in 1990, Manfred is still in charge of ECM as of 1999).

Windham Hill records was started in Palo Alto, California in 1976 as a way for Will to record his first collection of original songs for acoustic guitar. The first two artists on the new label were Will and his cousin, Alex deGrassi. Although Windham Hill was a modest success from early on, their whole world changed when Ackerman recorded and released George Winston's record Autumn. Autumn was a phenomenally successful record, it sold millions of copies, was reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine and put Windham Hill on the map.

For the next 10 years, Windham Hill kept releasing a stream of excellent recordings featuring beautiful album covers and wonderful music.

What is Windham Hill Music?
Windham Hill music has been called many things since it first gained national attention. Ackerman himself started out firmly in the John Fahey camp of solo acoustic guitarists. But Ackerman and his record company quickly turned into something different from Fahey and Leo Kottke. Importantly, nearly everything Windham Hill released was original music. While Fahey and Kottke have recorded a good deal of original music, much of their work is an exploration and revival of old American folk guitar traditions. Ackerman, deGrassi, Winston and the rest were deliberately creating something new.

Early on, people linked Windham Hill to the New Age ideas that were floating around Northern California. Darol Anger tried to push for the term New acoustic Music. Ackerman himself did not invent a term and today, 18 years later, in most record stores New Age is the term that has stuck.

This is how I can describe the early Windham Hill records:

• one musician would write and play 90% of the music on the record
• the musician would play an acoustic (though expertly recorded) instrument
• the most common instruments played were guitar and piano
• there was no signing
• the music they played was not jazz, pop, or classical, but it had pop melodies and sensibility that was not that different from classical music.

1976 - 1980
In Search of the Turtle's Navel - William Ackerman
Solo acoustic guitar. Good but not great. See my Ackerman page for more details.

It Takes A Year - William Ackerman
Solo acoustic guitar. Great. Super. Extraordinary.

Turning: Turning Back - Alex deGrassi
Solo acoustic guitar. Fantastically good. Initially it looked like deGrassi was just as good at creating compositions as Ackerman. Certainly this record, and the next (Slow Circle) were equal to Ackerman's compositions.

Childhood and Memory - William Ackerman
Solo acoustic guitar. Wonderful. Beautiful. Perfect. The best record in Will's long and remarkable career.

Piano Solos of Erik Satie - Bill Quist
Solo acoustic piano. This was an experiment for Windham Hill, a record not of original compositions, but an essentially classical music recording of the little known French composer, Erik Satie. Satie is known now largely because Brian Eno has named him the spiritual father of Ambient Music. The piano solos here are nice, but not that interesting. However, the link between this music and Brian Eno's ambient record: Music for Airports is clear.

Slow Circle - Alex deGrassi
Solo acoustic guitar. This is a very good record but a certain sameness creeps into the songs. Very much worth owning, but not quite at the level of Turning: Turning Back.

Soliloquy - David Qualey
Solo acoustic guitar. Not a very good record at all. There was one good piece on this which was used for the first Windham Hill Sampler album, but the rest of the music is rather dull and uninspired. Qualey never recorded again for Windham Hill.

Autumn - George Winston
Solo acoustic piano. Wonderful. Memory provoking. Hauntingly beautiful. This astounding record established Windham Hill as a major label (artistically if not financially) and established George Winston as the most popular solo pianist since Keith Jarrett. The strange truth is that George was originally going to record an album of his guitar music. If Autumn had not been recorded, the world would be a poorer place.

Willow - Daniel Hecht
Solo acoustic guitar. Another unsuccessful record. Not bad, but nothing that stands out either. Hecht also never recorded again for Windham Hill.

1981 - 1983
Passage - William Ackerman
Duets with guitar, piano, violin, French horn, and some solo guitar. This was Will's first experiment with adding additional instruments and musicians to his work. It was very successful. Remedios (with Darol Anger) and Hawk Circle (with George Winston) were excellent. Will continued to experiment with this type of music and he brought in other musicians who also liked this type of music.

Windham Hill Sampler '81 - Various Artists
This record is completely redundant. The great records from the early years of Windham Hill are all worth owning.

Wind Dance - Scott Cossu
Solo piano and group pieces. This is not one of my favorite records. It is far more jazz oriented than the other Windham Hill records. For me it is light jazz. If I want to hear jazz, it better be more challenging than this.

Breakfast in the Field - Michael Hedges
Solo guitar. Very, very good. Not his best record but well worth owning. See my Michael Hedges page for more details. Hedges recorded many other records for Windham Hill.

Clockwork - Alex deGrassi
Guitar in an ensemble. The last good deGrassi record. The title track, Clockwork is a masterpiece combining many other instruments into a seamless piece of musical invention. The live version is one of the best pieces of music ever recorded for Windham Hill. Other pieces on this record are not quite as good. Worth owning, barely.

Winter into Spring George Winston
Solo piano. Looking back on this record from 15 years distance, its not that good. While Autumn is a record that I return to again and again, this record has gathered dust for years now.

Elements - Ira Stein + Russell Waldor
Piano and Oboe. A record that has some good moments but overall, does not really work. Stein and Waldor come from an ECM jazz background (they trained with Oregon member Paul McCandless). Not bad, not great.

Tideline - Darol Anger + Barbara Higbie
Piano and Violin. Awesome. Tideline features duets between Anger's bluegrass influenced violin and Higbie's classical/jazz flavored piano. It works wonderfully well. Songs are played with passion and real feeling. This was the most energetic Windham Hill recording yet, proving that Windham Hill wasn't always going to help you go to sleep.

Shadowfax - Shadowfax
Electric flute, guitar, bass and drums. The best Shadowfax recording. Will took their rather loud and aggressive jazz/rock sound and released a record with a very delicate, nuanced texture. The record was lovely but not really in keeping with the group's spirit. Their later albums and live performances were quite different from this very sweet record. In my opinion, less enjoyable as well.

Solid Colors - Liz Story
Solo piano. Very, very nice record. When Autumn proved to be a huge success, Windham Hill was deluged with demo tapes from other piano players. Liz Story was one of the few piano players to make the grade. Solid Colors features wonderful melodies, beautifully recorded.

Windham Hill Sampler '82 - Various Artists
This record is slightly more worthwhile than the first sampler. Still, you are missing a great deal if you don't own the majority of the records Windham Hill released from this year (Tideline, Shadowfax, Breakfast in the Field).

December - George Winston
Solo piano. A wonderful Christmas recording from George that features two of his best solo pieces and a lovely collection of Christmas carols played in his most soothing style. I know of no better music to listen to on a cold winter night.

An Evening with Windham Hill Live - Various Artists
This record is very good indeed. I only wish it was longer. I saw one of the two concerts this group played (at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco) and it truly was magic on stage. Fantastic performances by Michael Hedges and Alex deGrassi. The version of Clockwork on this record is the best.

Vapor Drawings - Mark Isham
Electric keyboard music. This is Marks's first solo album and it is very good. Not perfect as one of the songs is a failure, but the rest of the music is soaring, inspirational. Mark has spent most of his career writing music for films. He is very good at it. His music seems to convey drama and is very emotional. Mark is also a highly talented trumpet player, in the jazz-fusion tradition of Miles Davis. I like all of his records and his best record, Castalia is not on Windham Hill.

Past Light - William Ackerman
Overall not the best Ackerman record, still, head and shoulders above many other releases, even on Windham Hill.

Nightnoise - Oskay and ODomhnaill
Good. Later records were better.

Aerial Boundaries - Michael Hedges
Super. Required listening. Hedges single best record.

Windham Hill Since 1990
Windham Hill has been on a steady decline since Will Ackerman sold his stake in the company and quit the music business. Without his artistic vision they haven't been able to consistently release good records. Some of the original artists carried on, Michael Hedges, George Winston, Darol Anger, Barbara Higbie continued to create worthwhile music. But you couldn't trust new artists on the Windham Hill label. Sometimes they were jazz, sometimes they were pop, usually they weren't very interesting. They certainly weren't making Windham Hill style music anymore.

Things change. Businesses grow, die or get absorbed. Windham Hill was bought by a major label, the offices in Palo Alto were closed and everything moved down to Los Angeles. Still, for a time, for a few short years, Windham Hill was the best.

-- Colin Glassey, Feb 5, 1999

Windham Hill Music

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