Watch Chicago legend Terry Callier perform classics including “What Color is Love” and “Dancing Girl.” An eternal favorite here at In Sheep’s Clothing HQ, Terry Callier aka “Jazz’s […]
Watch: Windham Hill Live at Wolftrap in 1986 with William Ackerman, Michael Hedges, and Shadowfax
In the mid-1970s, Palo Alto and vicinity was becoming a home computing hub. In Cupertino, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had partnered to begin building the first Apple computers and aligned themselves with kindred spirits as part of the Homebrew Computer Club.
Ten miles away, Stanford University was drawing thousands of young, creative innovators eager to forge something new, both technologically and culturally speaking. One of them was a guitarist uninterested in rock and the oversaturated youth marketplace; he was focused on delicate solo guitar music.
Born as a vehicle to get label founder Will Ackerman’s album Search For the Turtle’s Navel into record stores, Ackerman and then-wife Anne Robinson, gradually built Windham Hill (named for Ackerman’s favorite Vermont inn) to become an independent powerhouse. As the label grew, they added local compadres including Michael Hedges and George Winston.
Whether the simultaneous rise of Apple and Windham Hill was an accident of history or the product of a cultural stew unique to the region is for PhD candidates to argue. But it’s certainly notable that the birth of New Age music and the creation of a machine that helped launch a new age occurred at the same time and place.
“We weren’t driven by singles. We weren’t driven by radio,” recalled early Windham Hill operative Jeff Heiman. “We were driven by, ‘Let’s try and find as many ways as possible to tell people about this music.’” One way they accomplished this: Concerts and live broadcasts like the one below.
By the mid-1980s, the label had built a mini-empire with a singular sound, eventually signing a distribution deal with major label A&M Records. They released hundred of albums. Though Ackerman hated the term, new age sections started appearing in record stores, populated by artists including Suzanne Ciani, David Lanz, Kitaro, Iasos, Liz Story, Laraaji, Joanna Brouk and more.
“Windham Hill created its own bin,” artist manager Jeanne Rizzo (George Winston) told the Palo Alto Times. The label also successfully infiltrated health food shops and metaphysical book stores.
Despite doing big numbers, taste making media outlets such as Rolling Stone, Creem and The New York Times either dismissed the music or ignored it altogether.
“Much of this music is — now’s the time to say it — more boring than silence,” wrote critic Kelefa Sanneh in 2005, calling Windham Hill “the world’s most unshocking record company.” The Los Angeles Times described their output as “Yuppie Elevator Music.” Others called it hot tub music.
Such dismissiveness didn’t affect the demand for records from Windham Hill, Milwaukee powerhouse Narada, or the Tangerine Dream-connected label Private Music. But the vocal hate for the music certainly rubbed off on a younger generation curious about gentler, more subtle sounds but afraid to be caught dead with a Windham Hill release in their collection.
The 2013 comp I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America 1950-1990 was the first of many historical correctives that reopened the conversation on New Age and NA-adjacent music. By definition, that collection didn’t include more established labels like Windham Hill, though. That means that a bounty of music remains easy to find for collectors; Narada, Private, and WH records are a dime a dozen because they sold so many copies back in the day.
