New Bandcamp page from Will Ackerman lets you buy The Gathering samplers and selected Ackerman albums https://williamackerman.bandcamp.com/
For many years, Will Ackerman and Tom Eaton have been producing new music at Imaginary Road Studios. The output is huge and varied, but will feel familiar to fans of Windham Hill Records and Narada, but with fresh names, faces and compositions. Inspired by his own classic Windham Hill samplers, Ackerman has been releasing samplers from Imaginary Road under the name “The Gathering,” and the compilation downloads and CDs will introduce you to new artists and new worlds of music.
The Gathering CDs have been tough to come by recently, but now a new online Bandcamp shop makes all four compilations easy to sample and purchase on CD.
With artists like Masako, Jeff Oster, FLOW, Fiona Joy Hawkins, Kathryn Kaye, Todd Boston, Lawrence Blatt, and of course Ackerman himself, you’re sure to discover favorite new artists, and of course enjoy the sampler on its own merits as a walk through contemporary instrumental music.
From Ackerman: “Finally, my store is up and running! I am excited about it for a lot of reasons, but particularly I wanted to let you all know about THE GATHERING CDs. When I owned Windham Hill Records I created collections that I called “ Windham Hill Samplers.” These featured one piece off of every record we released within a year so that people could get acquainted with a group of brilliant new musicians. Likewise, THE GATHERING albums offer the music of a new generation of musicians I have produced. I am sure you will love being introduced to many of these brilliant new musicians. I also have a few of my own albums at the store now and there will be more released soon. https://williamackerman.bandcamp.com/
I recently sent a fan-boy e-mail to Will Ackerman at the current e-mail address he has listed on his website. I was just sending him some praise for his work in the ’70s and ’80s, thanking him for the beautiful music he created/produced that has been so great during this pandemic year, and also kind of wanted to inquire about any merchandise. Didn’t expect anything from it.
To my surprise, he got back to me later that day. In a lengthy response, he mentioned these compilations. I have to say, for the most part these are all really good! They are all quite long, really embracing the CD generation as opposed to the conciseness of the ’80s samplers… And there are a few tracks on each that I could leave. But all in all, highly recommended.
And no, unfortunately there’s no Windham Hill merchandise out there to be had. Shame!
Thank you for this website! What a treasure.
The Gathering albums seem no longer to be available through the Ackerman Bandcamp site (a link listed on a Gathering Facebook page leads nowhere, and the Will Ackerman Bandcamp ‘Merch’ page doesn’t list them).