WH-1032 Michael Hedges Aerial Boundaries

Michael Hedges Aerial Boundaries Vinyl Cover

Aerial Boundaries Review

Sgt. Pepper, Kind of Blue, Aerial Boundaries.

Few albums stand at both the pinnacle of a genre and simultaneously transcend them. Michael Hedges Aerial Boundaries is one of those few albums that served to define a genre by showing all that it is capable of, while simultaneously and immediately appealing to both casual listeners and those most in the know.

With Aerial Boundaries, Hedges atypical tunings and two-handed percussive technique brought his music to another level beyond that of his first recording “Breakfast in the Field”.

Much has been written about Hedges. I don’t have much to add – simply, If you are not familiar with this recording, you must hear it – and on a good system. If you are, it’s time to hear it again.

Aerial Boundaries Samples

We are fortunate that Randy Lutge has posted so many of the recording from the New Varsity Theater. Hedges was an electrifying live performer, and as perfect as the songs seem on vinyl, they reach another level of depth and complexity still when performed live. Spend a little time on YouTube and you’ll be amply rewarded.

Enjoy the samples, Liner Notes, Credits and “Remembering Michael Hedges” below.

Aerial Boudaries

Bensusan

Rickover’s Dream

Ragamuffin

After the Gold Rush

Hot Type

Spare Change

Menage a Trois

The Magic Farmer

Aerial Boundaries Track Listing

Side One:

  • Ó   Aerial Boundaries 4:45
  • Ó   Bensusan 2:30
  • Ó   Rickover’s Dream 5:00
  • Ó   Ragamuffin 3:15
  • ζ    After the Gold Rush 4:10

Side Two:

  • Ó   Hot Type 1:31
  • ∞   Spare Change 5:45
  • Δ   Menage a Trois 7:10
  • ♦   The Magic Farmer 3:50

Aerial Boundaries Credits

  • Michael Hedges: Guitar
  • Mike Manring: Fretless Bass on “After the Gold Rush” and “Menage a Trois”
  • Mindy Rosenfeld: Flutes on “Menage a Trois”

Produced by William Ackerman, Michael Hedges and Steven Millar

Ó     Recorded live to 2 track digital master at Windham Hill Farm, West Townshend, VT, using the Fedco Audio Labs remote truck. Engineered by Steven Miller, assisted by Tom Arrison and Nick Gutfreund.

ζ     Recorded live to 2 track master at Sheffield Studio, Baltimore, Maryland. Engineered by Bill Mueller.

♦     Recorded live to 2 track master at Different Fur Studio, San Francisco, CA. Engineered by Steven Miller.

Δ     Recorded at Mobius Music, San Francisco, CA. Engineered by Oliver DiCicco. Mixed to digital by Steven Miller at A&M Studios, Los Angeles, CA.

∞     Realized at the Peabody Electronic Music Studio, Baltimore, MD. All sounds are of guitar origin. Engineered and edited by Michael Hedges. Mixed to digital by Steven Miller at the Peabody Recording Studio.

  • Digital transfers by Mark Boeddeker at Master Digital, Venice, CA.
  • Original Mastering by Bernie Grundman, A&M Studios, Los Angeles, CA.
  • Cover photo by Richard Santangelo.
  • Liner photo by Cathye English.
  • Design by Anne Ackerman Robinson.

All compositions written and arranged by Michael Hedges, published by Naked Ear Music (BMI) and Windham Hill Music (BMI) except “After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young, published by Broken Fiddle Music (ASCAP) and Cotillion Music (BMI).

Manufactured by Windham Hill Records. A Division of Windham Hill Productions Inc. box 9388 Stanford, CA 94305

©(P) Windham Hill Records, 1984

Distributed by A&M Records, Inc.

WH-1032

Windham Hill is a registered trademark of Windham Hill Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Aerial Boundaries Liner Notes

Thanks to Randy Lutge, Steven Miller, Hilleary Burgess, Thayne and Ruth Hedges, George Winston, Geoffrey Wright, Steve Backer, Anne Robinso, Will Ackerman, Alex deGrassi, Mindy Hedges, Steve Reich, Admiral Rickover, Mike Manring, and Pierre Bensusan for their encouragement, support and inspiration.

The telescope was invented in 1608 by a Dutch lens grinder, Hans Lippershay. One day Lippershay discovered accidentally that by putting lenses at both ends of a tube and then putting the tube up to his eye, he could view things “close up”. He called his device a looker, and thought it would be useful in war. Galileo got hold of one, improved it a little, and they used it himself to challenge prevailing ideaas abotu the solar system. This music is dedicated to the spirit of Galileo.

Remembering Michael Hedges

Immediately after Hedges died in 1998, Acoustic Guitar magazine and Alex de Grassi did a lengthy recollection of of Michael, consistent with the stories I’ve heard from engineer Harn Soper. I do not own the rights that this content, but given that the web is old enough that I’ve seen valuable pages disappear over the years, I have decided to do a cut and paste. (If you own this content, and want me to remove it from this page, simply contact me via the comments below.)

The death of Michael Hedges in a car accident last November sent a quake of shock and sadness through the music community, and tremors are still being felt. Using radical alternate tunings and two-handed tapping and percussion techniques, Hedges redefined the language of the acoustic guitar, cutting an extraordinarily influential path. For this special tribute, we look back at Hedges’ life and music, through the eyes of his friends and collaborators. Alex de Grassi, Hedges’ labelmate at Windham Hill and a groundbreaking guitarist himself, compiled the stories that follow from hours of conversations, some of which occurred at a small gathering of San Francisco Bay Area musicians who had known and worked with Hedges for years. Several of these people also shared rare photos: the black-and-white images of Hedges’ landmark recording sessions for Aerial Boundaries were rescued from water-damaged negatives, and most are published here for the first time. Together, these words and pictures provide an unprecedented front-row view of the life and music of a guitar revolutionary.

–Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

FIRST ENCOUNTERS

RANDY LUTGE (manager/owner of the New Varsity Theater, Palo Alto, California) It was the summer of ’79 or ’80, and I was sitting in the lobby of the Varsity Theater when a fellow with very long hair and a guitar walked down the courtyard, looking like a street musician out to hustle up a gig. It was Michael, walking in from a day at his computer/electronic music class at Stanford, and he said, “I hear this is the place to play in Palo Alto.” I said, “Yes, perhaps. What sort of music do you do?” Mike said that he didn’t much like to be pigeonholed into any one style but that he liked Neil Young a lot.

“Aha! We have all kinds of people, all the time, who do Crosby, Stills, and Nash. We’re really not interested.”
“What would you like me to sound like?” he asked.
“Well, if you walked in here and said you sounded like Alex de Grassi or Will Ackerman, I would be much more intrigued.”
“All right, I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said.

The next afternoon back he comes with a cassette tape in hand. The night before he had recorded “Silent Anticipations” and one other piece. It seemed so bold at the time that the tape got put on right then, with everyone including Mike checking it out. It was clear from the first few notes that it was very eclectic, complex stuff. I told him the place was his, whenever he wanted, as often as he wanted. He played the next night. That evening was so special that we got out the early primitive video camera and taped, as we would do for so many later shows. Michael spent the next several years having the Varsity as his musical home base, going eventually from tips in the courtyard to large concert events in the theater.

WILL ACKERMAN (founder of Windham Hill Records) I was accosted on the street by Randy Lutge of the New Varsity Theater. He said, “Look, I’ll give you two free tickets to the movie tonight and dinner if you’ll come hear this guy play.” I’m hearing that all the time and I’m thinking, “Oh God, but two free tickets and a dinner, that’s pretty good.” So he takes me to that little upstairs room overlooking the courtyard, and Michael was there playing for just a handful of people. At the time, he was playing most of the stuff that’s on Breakfast in the Field[his first album, 1981], obviously some pretty impressive stuff. I started writing out what I could remember of a contract on a napkin and had him sign it. It was a way of saying to Michael how completely overwhelmed I was and how sincere I was about wanting to work with him. That was one of the quickest propositions in the history of Windham Hill.

MICHAEL MANRING (Windham Hill recording artist) At the time we met, I was playing in a band in D.C. and doing a bunch of pickup gigs. One night in Baltimore I was doing basically a jazz gig with Lon Efram. We played this place where we did a set of dinner music and then a set of pretty much whatever we wanted. Mostly we were playing jazz tunes, but in the second set Lon told me to play some of my solo bass stuff I was working on at the time. Michael was there–I think he had lent us a PA–and he came up to me after the set and was real excited. He saw that I was goofing with some stuff on the bass that was like what he was doing on the guitar. We started talking about all kinds of stuff. He seemed such a strange person and very intense. I remember asking Lon, “Is this guy OK?” Lon said, “Yeah, he’s a pretty good guitar player.”

So we got in this intense conversation right away about a lot of music that we liked. We had a lot of common tastes in music. We were talking about Jimi Hendrix and Anton Webern and Morton Feldman and Harry Partch. I didn’t know very many people who knew about their music. I think we talked about Van Halen.

Michael said he was working on this demo tape for this little record company that nobody ever heard of, especially me. And of course that was Windham Hill. I went up a couple of weeks or a month later and played on his demo. I met him at his apartment, and he said, “Man, you gotta hear this record”–and it was your record [Alex de Grassi’s Turning: Turning Back]. Then we did the demo in the Peabody electronic music lab. He gave me a tape of some of his electronic music and some of his chamber stuff for unusual ensembles like vibes, cello, and guitar. I still have a copy of a piece he did for flute and tape. He actually started performing it in ’90 or ’91. An atonal piece, as I remember, it was based on frequency relationships. One of the first things we talked about in our first conversation was composing with the Fibonacci series [a numerical sequence developed by 13th-century Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci]. There was this book we were both interested in that analyzed Bartók’s music in terms of the Fibonacci series. We had both been doing “Fibonacci” compositions at that point. He was also writing pop music at the time. He had already written “Watching My Life Go By.” He had a bunch of other songs like that that he never played again.

We talked about music constantly, sometimes staying up all night. The amazing thing about him was he’d be playing something that was totally rocking, totally melodic, and yet really intellectually challenging, and the two things would be happening completely interweaved with each other. He wrote a piece I used to love to play. It was a pop song, but the melody was a 12-tone row. It was gorgeous, and you wouldn’t know it was a tone row unless you analyzed the music. And that was so much how he thought.

ALEX DE GRASSI I remember when I heard his first album. I hadn’t met him yet–I’d just been hearing about him through Will. I heard the record and I went, “Wow, this guy’s great!” The piece that really stood out was “Breakfast in the Field,” because it was such an unusual approach to solo guitar. A lot of the other pieces on the album were great pieces, but they sounded a little like Martin Carthy, a little like this and that. It wasn’t until Aerial Boundaries came out [1984] that I thought the really amazing stuff emerged.

MANRING I remember doing Breakfast in the Field and thinking, “This guy’s got a wonderful music sense.” I don’t know if I encouraged him or not, but we talked about getting more intense, more rhythmic; we were both real interested in the tapping thing. When we were touring for Breakfast in the Field, we used to do his tunes and a lot of covers. We would do a bunch of Neil Young tunes and a bunch of Beatles tunes. We were on our way to play in Ashland [Oregon], and he was saying, “We need to do a new Beatles tune,” even though we were already doing five Beatles tunes. I remember saying, “Oh, we should do ‘Come Together.’” And he said, “Oh, no, no–that’s much too crazy, we could never do that.” And I said, “No, Michael, we really should do it. I think it would be great–we gotta do something different.” We were playing all the acoustic stuff–“Rocky Raccoon,” all the mellow stuff. I finally talked him into it, and we stopped at some small town and found a music store that had the music so that we could learn the lyrics. I taught him the lyrics as we continued driving and then we played it that night. So I don’t know if I encouraged him, [but he began] to get a little wilder.

BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES

STEVE MILLER (engineer/producer) I remember Will saying when we were getting ready to do the live record [Windham Hill Live, Berklee Performance Center, Boston, 1983], “Wait until you hear this piece [‘Rickover’s Dream’] that Hedges is going to do.” I didn’t hear it until we did the dress rehearsal that first day. I just went, “Holy shit!” It definitely knocked me out. I had never heard anything like that. It was the next step from that piece “Silent Anticipation.”

WILL ACKERMAN “Silent Anticipation” was striving for something, but “Rickover’s Dream” was cinematic. It’s such a realized piece.

MILLER The first day he showed up [to record in Vermont], we were all psyched because at the live show at Berklee he had shown up with this TC [Electronics] chorus. It was so cool, that sound we got on the live record [Windham Hill Live] for “Rickover’s Dream.” So when he showed up, I said, “Where’s that box?” He said he had left his stuff at the Greyhound station in Boston and it got ripped off. So right off the bat we had to get him a chorus.

The first thing we recorded was maybe one of the more acoustic pieces, like “Ragamuffin” or something. And then we did “Rickover’s Dream.” Will and I actually were both kind of bummed out because it wasn’t as cool as the live version; that was the piece Will had been saying to everyone, “This is the most influential, important acoustic guitar piece of the last 50 years.” And then, as I remember it, we did the piece “Aerial Boundaries.” Will and I talked, and I said, “I’m going to try to take it another step further than ‘Rickover’s Dream.’” And he said, “Do it. This will be great.”

ACKERMAN As far as [recording the album] Aerial Boundaries, I almost have amnesia.

MILLER There’s a good reason why Will doesn’t remember much, because he got poisoned on the second day! He was building his garage, and he was putting some sealer on it, and we didn’t see him for two and a half days.

ACKERMAN Oh yeah, I was really sick! No wonder I was out! What I remember, what I think I remember, is Michael being in the living room. Steve had created this monster sound [out of “Aerial Boundaries”], and Michael was basically horrified. I remember him saying that he was looking for an acoustic record, and this had gone into this very different place.

MILLER He freaked! He totally wigged out and ran out of the [remote recording] truck and went into the woods for a few hours. And we couldn’t find him. Nick Gutfriend [owner of the remote recording truck] and I played football for half the day. And then Michael came in and smoked a huge joint. It took him a few times [listening] before he went, “Wow, that’s pretty wild.” And then the next day Michael and I went and found Will at his property.

ACKERMAN And I had poisoned myself [with the sealer]. It was bad. I was so dizzy that when I went to try to get out of that room, I fell down the trap door. And you know, that wasn’tfunny. I was hurtin’. I was stark naked on the ground in either October or November. . . . Oh, God.

MILLER And Michael was kind of uptight at that moment, because he still wasn’t, I don’t think, really convinced that this [recording of the piece “Aerial Boundaries”] was the thing. And then when Will told him what had happened [in the garage], it totally loosened him up–he felt a lot better [laughs]. . . .

He did the piece “Spare Change” on a four-track. These days people would be able to cut and paste that together on samplers. I came to Baltimore [Peabody’s studio] and helped him get started, and I came back about five days later. I didn’t realize what he was doing. He had written the melody backwards, physically on paper, and played it backwards, and then turned the tape over so it would play the melody. I said, “Jeez, Michael, I’m anal, but I don’t have the patience to do that!”

Not only that, but there’s that one chord that drops in pitch. So we’re going, “How do we make that happen? Like a whammy bar or something on the acoustic guitar?” So we sat there for an entire evening trying different techniques to make that thing happen until finally the two of us were pressing the recorder at synchronized times and I was rolling this oscillator that vari-sped the machine down. We were there for five hours getting that one thing to happen.

TRANSCENDING TECHNIQUE

ALEX DE GRASSI I remember doing a little promotional gig with Michael at an audio dealer in San Francisco when Aerial Boundaries and my album Southern Exposure had just come out. Michael asked me if I minded if he stood up when he played. It had never occurred to me to stand up and play solo guitar. I had played standing back in my street musician days, but I always felt that I had more control over my playing by sitting down. Everybody I had seen playing solo guitar–Leo Kottke, John Renbourn, Ralph Towner–all sat when they played.

I told Michael whatever he wanted to do was fine with me. Then I sat back and was amazed at both the precision and energy of his playing as he stood and played. It really changed my thinking about what was possible. In Randy Lutge’s video of Michael playing at the Varsity back in ’82, you can see even though he was standing up, he had the hand position and technique of a classical player even when he was playing a Neil Young song.

MICHAEL MANRING He was actually a pretty good classical guitar player. He was playing Sor, Tarrega, and Bach. He wasn’t going to do that as a profession, but he could sit and play that stuff well. He studied classical guitar at Peabody, although he was an electronic music major.

DE GRASSI I can see how there might have been some influence from Sor in Michael’s playing because a lot of those Sor studies have to do with overlapping voices and the duration of notes. That was something that Michael did so well–along with all the other innovative techniques in his vocabulary.

JOHN STROPES (Hedges transcriber/publisher) It was clear from the beginning that the current state of notation for guitar would be inadequate to fully express Michael’s compositions. Now, it could also be argued it’s pretty inadequate for anyone else’s guitar music too. It only gives you a little bit of information. But he had really cut new ground, exploring new areas of guitar technique that had not been previously exploited, such as duration of notes, for example–carefully controlling when notes stop. That was something that was rarely, if at all, expressed. You can write a half note, but when you play the guitar it often might not be a half note. And we all know this and we have lived with this for many years, but in order to capture the real truth of Michael’s music it seemed like it was incumbent upon us to develop notation that would be able to focus in on those things that make it unique. We had not only to try to develop notational devices, but also to test them with groups of students to make sure that in fact you could get a result at the other end that was somewhat similar to the original performance. It’s something that more guitar music should focus on.

I think what surprised us all was that he not only had the technique to be a significant artist, but that we had in our midst a great composer. I think on one level or another it’s what struck everyone.

MANRING He got so far away from technique. I think he was actually a little bit uncertain about his technique. When we met, he was studying with this jazz player Larry Woldridge. And Michael kind of couldn’t do that Pat Martino thing. I remember for years him trying to play like that. Certainly he had the brains to do it, but somehow the particular connections involved in making that kind of music just never seemed to work for him. But then he took all his musical skills and put it in this other direction that was totally amazing.

TUCK ANDRESS (Windham Hill recording artist, with Tuck and Patti) Michael had the ability to completely distract you from how dazzling the technique was by being so musical.

MANRING I think Michael never felt like the guitar players who have all the chops; he never had that cockiness about his chops. And he was always real, real shy about playing with other people or playing other people’s music.

BOB DUSKIS (former head of A&R at Windham Hill) I remember we were in Philadelphia on a Windham Hill tour staying in the same hotel as the rock band GTR, which featured Steve Hackett from Genesis and Steve Howe, one of Michael’s heroes, from Yes. We’re in the elevator, and Steve Howe gets on with one of his roadies. Hedges says to him, “Hey, you know what I have in this case? I have a Dyer harp guitar.” Howe says, “Yeah? I’d love to check it out.” So we get out of the elevator. Howe has no idea who Hedges is. Hedges pulls out the guitar, and suddenly he knows he has the opportunity to play for one of his guitar heroes.

So he begins to play, and Howe’s jaw just hits the ground. He stands and watches him for a minute. Then Michael gives him a cassette of Aerial Boundaries. As he is walking away, we overhear Howe say to his roadie, “That guy was fucking unbelievable!” Michael was walking on air the rest of the day.

OTHER VOICES, OTHER INSTRUMENTS

MICHAEL MANRING He always talked about wanting to find a drummer we could play with and having a band. We tried it a couple of times. Something about that was really hard for him, but I never quite figured out what it was. I’d offer to bring some drummers up, and he would get excited about it but then change his mind.

Sometimes when we played with a group of people, he would get lost, kind of buried. The amazing things that he did were often the more subtle things that made you listen more deeply. It was hard to hear those things in a big group.

When Michael and I played together, we just never seemed to get in each other’s way. There was always plenty of room. It was certainly a thrill to play with him. It was like a conversation, and we would always get into something deep right away. Sometimes we wouldn’t play together for a few months, and then we’d play a gig and just be right back continuing that musical dialogue barely saying hello. It’s too bad he didn’t play with more people; he was such a treat to play with. He was a great listener. Everything was different every night. For a guy who “didn’t improvise,” he was a better improviser than almost anyone I’ve met. He wasn’t a jazz player, but he always found some new place to take the music. And it always seemed appropriate, perhaps reflecting something that had happened that day. He was definitely somebody who was fully awake.

PATTI CATHCART (Windham Hill recording artist, with Tuck and Patti) Michael and I sang together one time at Stanford. I can’t remember what songs we did, because we literally were just jamming–we were by the skin of our teeth. I’ve always been a complete fan of Michael’s vocal style; I love the way he sang. I know it was always hard for him to get Windham Hill behind him on his vocal projects. We all played together just last September in Chicago and Montalvo [Los Gatos, California]. His singing had just gotten more beautiful. He was playing the hell out of the guitar and singing like an angel.

TUCK ANDRESS I remember in the early days he was playing a lot of piano, which of course he wasn’t doing later. He was good at that too! I remember talking to him one time back then, and he seemed bemused at the fact that he had really gotten over doing this acoustic guitar and singing thing. He said he loved doing that, but that was just one of the things that he did, and that it just worked. This was just when he was beginning to get a lot of notoriety. He said he would “definitely ride this thing out and go for it, but somewhere along the line I’m going to do some of these other things that are equally interesting to me.” So we never really got to hear a lot of those other things. But he had quite a variety of talents.

LARGER THAN LIFE

TOM LARSON (tour manager 1995–1997) I probably saw Michael in concert for the first time in ’88 or ’89. I was blown away by the bigness of his live guitar sound. At that point, I thought, “This is someone I would be interested in working with.” He played voicings that you didn’t normally hear on guitar. Also the color and the sonorities were part of what attracted me to his music in the first place.

I feel really rather spoiled and lucky and fortunate that I got to hang out with him for the last couple of years. We did about four tours and some summer dates. We did a couple of openers for Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and that was a real treat. We went to Brazil. That was interesting. I met him in Brazil, and he showed up with no hair. He had had this helmet made [seen on the cover of Oracle] with holes to stick his hair through, and then he goes and cuts his hair all off. We did four nights in Brazil. It was fun to see how strong the response was. He was doing the Peter Gabriel tune “Talk to Me,” and I think he was doing “Pinball Wizard.” The last two weeks we were out on tour he was doing Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” He was doing it on the harp guitar. Normally on the harp guitar he had five strings in the bass section, but for that tune he had to wire up a sixth string. He had gotten an extra tuning machine from Steinberger that he liked, and he put it on. At the intermission he would have the monitor tech undo that string so it wouldn’t goof him up in the next set when he had to play “Because It’s There,” one of the harp guitar features.

Michael was incredibly particular about his monitor mix. When I started out with him he had two wedges down front so he’d get that nice stereo imaging. Then he’d have two more speakers behind him that were usually in mono. Towards the end, those speakers became stereo, and then he wanted stereo side fills as well. So he’d end up having this huge six-speaker system on stage, so that wherever he went on stage, he was literally inside his sound. He also would want reverb in the monitors. It ended up working really well, and the guitar sound in the front of the house at the Baltimore Artscape Festival [1997] was the biggest sound I ever heard from any acoustic guitar in my life. I just remember sitting there and thinking, “This is really fun.” There were probably five to eight thousand people out on the hill that day. Later that day we came back and listened to Tito Puente and grinned from ear to ear and danced. Later that night he showed me his old haunts in Baltimore.

WIDE-EYED AND WILD

ALEX DE GRASSI Michael was known to have his eccentricities, but underneath it all one senses he was still that wide-eyed, somewhat innocent Oklahoma boy.

TOM LARSON He had his rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, but he also had a really solid sense of where his family was. It was always a treat whenever his mom would come to shows; she would bribe us for good seats with cookies and stuff like that. So he had a bit of both senses, but it was that innocence that was great. One of the things that I thought he did really well–whether with fans after a show, with promoters, or with me–was the way he had of making you feel, at that moment, like you were the center of the world, that you were the focus of his utmost attention. He gave himself completely to whoever he was talking to, or to whatever he was talking about. If we were talking casually or listening to a Rolling Stones song or a Prince song, he was totally able to go into that moment. That’s the way he looked at life–go for every moment. He was curious about everything–somewhat innocent, but it never seemed to hurt him.

He wanted to fly if the drive was over three hours. Part of his regimen was making sure he had time to do his yoga every day, so sometimes he’d end up doing it at the airport. He had this rug, and he’d sit there by the gate while everyone else was sitting in those chairs. He’d be on the floor doing these stretches on his rug or rolling around on this nine-inch–diameter spiked blue ball. He was definitely eccentric. One thing his success gave him–and he was never a wealthy man–was that he made enough money in his career so that he never had to do anything he didn’t want to do. He was always pretty much able to do the music that he wanted to do, and call it what he wanted.

During the last couple of tours he was really into his Chinese meditation and the theory of five elements. The song “Oracle” was originally called “The Fusion of the Five Elements.” It has five specific sections that deal with water, fire, earth, wood, and metal. The song keeps repeating that cycle. He was exploring that along with the Chinese herbs. He’d go to that side of his personality on some nights. Other nights, say in a club, it would be a looser vibe and he might decide to have a white Russian or a shot of tequila–although he would just kind of sip it and maybe drink half of it, just to be in the culture.

JOHN STROPES Michael’s music came from a deep source within himself. He was a very spiritual person, and his music embodied profound things for people. Music was not his life. More than anyone he realized that music was about life. He felt driven to be a composer; he had that talent. But it was by expressing what was going on in his life that his music had such an ability to move people.

WILL ACKERMAN My memory of Michael is much more of the guy than the musician. He was such a character . . . truly the only one of those on the planet. He seemed to embrace all aspects of life evenly. There didn’t seem to be the division in him between good and evil. Whatever it was, it was fascinating to him. He seemed to embrace the gutter as well as the sun with an equal amount of fascination. I always kind of admired him for that.

MICHAEL MANRING Whenever I hung out with him, big things happened. Whether it was ridiculous, tragic, or inspiring, big things would always happen. He lived his life with so much intensity. Every experience was magnified. I would worry about him sometimes. He used to love to walk on those cliffs by his place in Mendocino [California]. That’s just how he lived his life: on the edge.

RANDY LUTGE Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him. Remembrances of trips to Lake Tahoe, being woken in the morning to share a newly scribed “Rickover’s Dream,” andjoining him for a trip to the Grammies when Aerial Boundaries was nominated [Best Engineered Record]. Sometime last spring, about ten in the evening, I got a call. It was Michael. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, could he stop by? We spent an hour or so together, catching up on our lives. We played a song or two together, and he reminded me of some chording he had taught me years earlier for Neil Young’s “Don’t Let It Bring You Down.” Mike was not only good to listen to, he was good at listening, and would always turn a conversation about what was happening for him into inquiries about his friends’ lives. Very special, deeply missed.

TOM LARSON I last saw Michael after a gig at Club Bené [in New Jersey]. We were back at the hotel with Evan Brubaker, the monitor engineer and a good singer-songwriter in his own right, and Karen Haskell, who was driving and selling merchandise. The four of us sat around and just talked and had a great time. Michael had this crystal with him. It was probably 12 inches long and four inches in diameter–big white crystal, probably weighed about 25 pounds. He had picked it up about two weeks earlier, and he was sitting there talking about pumping crystal and lifting it over his head. It was sort of a joke, but he was sort of serious, and he was talking about how he was going to get himself in shape and we were having some good yucks. And then, all of a sudden, he pulls out the Tao Te Ching and reads something that was terribly profound and funny:

If you realize that all things change
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren’t afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can’t achieve.
Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place.
When you handle the master carpenter’s tools,
chances are that you’ll cut your hand.

The next morning his girlfriend Janet came down from Long Island to pick him up, and we all said good-bye. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Best tour yet. We really got it on this one.” And he was genuinely the happiest I’d ever seen him.

——————————————-

There is a Michael Hedges memorial fund available at:
Children of Michael Hedges, c/o Bank of America, 228 North Main Street Fort Bragg, CA 95437 USA

There are several good Web sites devoted to the memory of Michael Hedges. The official site is www.nomadland.com. Another interesting fan site can be found at www.rootwitch.com.

WH-1030 Alex de Grassi Southern Exposure Windham Hill

WH 1030 de grassi southern exposure
WH 1030 de grassi southern exposure

Southern Exposure Review

A tour de force of finger-picking guitar, and in many ways the album that would set de Grassi’s direction for years, Southern Exposure is an understated delight.

Technically impressive, and hewing to a fast-paced solo guitar sound, Southern Exposure nonetheless shows many moods. From the ringing rhythms of Overland, to the final notes of the humming Subway, De Grassi provides an album that rewards close listening, yet maintains a cheerful veneer of joy. Where Turning: Turning Back was more pensive, and Clockwork played on group dynamics developing in rhythm and melody, Southern Exposure sets a style that De Grassi is still exploring today.

Highly recommended.

Southern Exposure Tunings

http://www.stropes.com/index.php?glbm=20&fa=12&cdid=137Track Listing

Side One: 18:15

  • Overland 2:29
  • Blue and White 4:16
  • 36 4:40
  • Cumulus 4:55
  • Southern Exposure 1:55

Side Two 19:41

  • Western 4:02
  • Street Waltz 3:37
  • Heavy Feet 4:39
  • Empty Room 3:04
  • Subway 4:19

Southern Exposure Samples

Overland

Southern Exposure

Western

Credits

WH 1030 alex de grassi southern exposure back cover
Alex de Grassi, 1983. Photo by Bud Lee, Courtesy TWA Ambassador Magazine

Produced by Alex de Grassi and Steven Miller

  • Recorded in May, 1983, at the Music Annex, Menlo Park, CA
  • Engineered by Steven Miller
  • Assistant engineers Russel Bond and Roger Wiersma
  • Digital editing and transfer by Mark Boeddeker, Master Digital, Venice, CA
  • Mastered by Bernie Grundman at A&M
  • Matrix and pressings by Soundome, Irvine, CA
  • Cover photo by Barry Brukoff
  • Liner photo by Bud Lee, courtesy TWA Ambassador Magazine
  • Design by Anne Ackerman Robinson

This album was recorded live to two-track digital, using a Sony PCM 1600

  • All compositions by Alex de Grassi
  • All selections Tropo Music (BMI)
  • Administered by Windham Hill Music (BMI)

My guitar was built by Ervin Somogyi of Berkeley, CA

Special thanks to Lila for always listening, and to an anonymous voice in the audience for the title “Subway”.

  • Manufactured by Windham Hill Records
  • A Division of Windham Hill Productions Inc.
  • Box 9388, Stanford, CA 94305
  • (c) (p) Windham Hill Records 1983
  • Distributed by A&M

Other Alex de Grassi recordings on Windham Hill Records

1. Turning: Turning Back

2. Slow Circle

3. Clockwork

4. Southern Exposure

WH 1029 Shadowfax Shadowdance

WH 1029 Shadowfax Shadowdance
WH 1029 Shadowfax Shadowdance

WH 1029 Shadowfax Shadowdance

Review

Shadowdance confidently strides into the Windham Hill catalog with the showstopping New Electric India, electric guitar and thundering bass resounding. This is a slightly different approach than the bands eponymous label debut which was specifically composed to work within Windham Hill’s established acoustic sound. After the success of the first, the band was clearly given a little more freedom to follow their live sound than they dared on their original Windham Hill release. While Shadowfax has incredible depth texture and flow, Shadowdance brings dynamics and drive to the band’s gorgeous melodic sensibility.

From the opening note of New Electric India through the closing hum of the track Shadowdance, every note carries you through a churning river of sound depositing you at the end both thrilled and relaxed. Indeed, maybe the water analogy comes easily because Shadowdance has been used at the plankton exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the last 20 years.

Side Two carries the torch with the Don Cherry-penned track Brown Rice – a standout from the live performances, and closes with the more conventional fusion track A Song for My Brother, a fan favorite.

The sound quality is again extraordinary. Ackerman once again looked to Mobile Fidelity for the mastering and RTI for the pressings. Playing the album on my current vinyl rig was a shocker: the recording is so dynamic and detailed. I’m sure that in part that’s because this album is seared into my memory from countless plays on a Maxell cassette. In 1984-85, I was an exchange student to Yugoslavia, specifically Serbia, and due to space restrictions I could only bring 10 cassettes for my year there.  Shadowfax/Shadowdance was the one Windham Hill tape I brought. Truly, for me, this was a “Desert Island Disk.”

Unfortunately, Stuart Nevitt, Chuck Greenberg and Bruce Malament  have all passed away.

Shadowfax on Facebook

Chuck Greenberg on iLike

New York Times Obituary for Chuck Greenberg

Joy Greenberg has written the biography “A Pause in the Rain” about Chuck, and maintains his web site:  http://www.chuckgreenberg.com/cgindex.htm

You can find Joy’s site, and samples from her book here: http://www.joyhornergreenberg.com/jghome.htm She shares fascinating anecdotes and details about the band, as well as personal remembrances, in an easy engaging style; I highly recommend it for any Shadowfax fan.

Joy has generously permitted the reprint of an excerpt here:

Excerpt from the Chuck Greenberg biography “A Pause in the Rain” by Joy Greenberg

The success of Shadowfax enabled the band to go into production on a second album. For material, they didn’t have to look too far. Intuitive businessman that he was, Chuck began thinking about all those old Watercourse Way masters over at Passport Records.

Although Watercourse Way had been out for eight years, the band had never received a dime in royalties. Chuck knew that there were many copies in print, however, and that the demand for them would increase with the release of the new Shadowfax. He also believed that if Shadowfax turned out to be a hit, there might be a renewed interest in the band’s first album, Watercourse Way. However, he wasn’t willing for Passport to be the beneficiary of any newfound success, particularly since he felt that Passport had burned the band for nonpayment of royalties. So, Chuck and the band’s attorney Steven Lowy devised a scheme to buy back all the old master tapes. Chuck knew he’d have to move quickly—before the release of Shadowfax. Once Passport suspected it might be able to gain more mileage out of Watercourse Way, the price for the masters would go up.

It worked—Chuck made them an offer and Passport was only too happy to rid themselves of what they perceived to be a “dead horse.” On the very day that the Billboard review hit the stands raving about Shadowfax, Chuck was collecting the master tapes from the Passport warehouse and blithely walking out the door with them.

Gaining the rights to Watercourse Way turned out to be more significant than even Chuck imagined at the time. In addition to re- releasing it en toto, Windham Hill selected one of its cuts, a lilting Chuck/G.E. duet called “Petite Aubade,” to be on the first of their Winter Solstice series, which went on to achieve Gold Record status. It also made it possible to “borrow” those tunes which the band felt were basically worthy but which had not succeeded as well on Watercourse Way as they had expected. For this reason, the title song from Watercourse Way, along with G.E.’s “Song for My Brother” were selected to be rerecorded for the second Windham Hill Shadowfax album, Shadowdance.

As with Shadowfax, Chuck and G.E. shared song writing duties on Shadowdance, with the exception of a piece by Don Cherry which was a medley of two tunes, “Brown Rice/Karmapa Chenno.” G.E., Phil, and Chuck were big fans of Cherry’s music and had been performing “Brown Rice” live, traditionally as the closing number of their set. It was the only non-Shadowfax composition they ever recorded or performed, and likewise one of the few with lyrics. Nonetheless, it was a testament to the band’s arranging skills. A consistent and perennial show-stopper, “Brown Rice” featured rap-like (before it was in style) nursery rhyme lyrics growled out by G.E. and backed by his searing guitar, with Chuck screaming on tenor sax, building to a crescendo then switching to a wailing lyricon—all pushed forcefully by Phil and Stu’s rhythm section.

Shadowdance became another showcase for Chuck’s burgeoning production genius. Although it cost slightly more than Shadowfax to create, he brought it in on time and under budget. In addition to the seven touring band members, he enlisted Emil Richards in the studio again, with Michael Spiro and Mickey Lehockey to beef up the percussion. The title tune from Shadowdance went on to become a featured number live, often receiving the greatest recognition and applause whenever they performed it and deservedly so. “Shadowdance” combined all the best qualities of Shadowfax: a catchy melody, rhythmic beat and interesting assortment of instruments.

Virtuoso percussionist Emil Richards had filled up the whole room at Group IV Sound with his esoteric collection of instruments from around the world, and the result was astounding. “Shadowdance” became a consistently sought tune by filmmakers, TV and radio shows for background music. After more than a decade, it is still being used by the Monterey Bay Aquarium for what I call its “dancing plankton” exhibit.

The band was also now able to afford a better recording studio when they set out to do Shadowdance, finding in Group IV the perfect place financially, personally, and technologically. A few years earlier, Chuck had performed on a movie soundtrack at Group IV and managed to cut a deal for himself through the owners to use the place at night—traditionally “dead” time––at a bargain rate. Without Angel Ballestier and the rest at Group IV, it would have been impossible to cut such high quality records for the price. So began an illustrious multi-record liaison between band and studio.

Shadowfax 1983 band lineup
WH 1029 Shadowfax Shadowdance back cover

Shadowfax members are active on the web, catch up with them on Facebook and MySpace.

Samples

Shadowdance

A Song for My Brother

Track Listings

Side One: 20:51

  • New Electric India 5:12,  Stinson Ξ
  • Watercourse Way 5:06, Greenberg-Stinson Ο Ξ
  • Ghost Bird 5:04, Stinson Ξ
  • Shadowdance 5:20, Greenberg Ο

Side Two 17:14

  • Brown Rice/Karmapa Chenno 4:18, D. Cherry ◊
  • Distant Voice 3:46, Stinson-Greenberg Ξ Ο
  • A Song for my Brother 9:04, Stinson Ξ

Ξ Selections Greenshadow Music  (BMI)

Ο Selections Dream Wheel Music (BMI)

All Selections Administered by Windham Hill Music (BMI)

◊ Selection Eternal River Music (BMI)

Credits

SHADOWFAX:

Additional Instrumentation:

  • Emil Richards: Paiste gamelon gongs, bass flapamba, metal and bamboo angklung, wood block marimba, marimba on Shadowdance; Chinese water cymbals, kanjgeera on New Electric India. The percussion ensemble on Shadowdance was conducted by Emil Richards.
  • Michael Spiro: conga, chekere, guiro on Brown Rice; hand percussion on Watercourse Way, Brown Rice.
  • Mick Lehocky: percussion on Shadowdance and Brown Rice.
  • Adam Rudolph: tabla on New Electric India

Produced by Chuck Greenberg

  • Recorded and mixed at Group IV Audio, Hollywood, CA
  • Additional Recording at Fiddler Studio, Hollywood, CA
  • Recording and mix engineer: Harry Andronis
  • Assistant engineers: Andy d’Addario and Mike Gilbert
  • Synthesizer Programming: Todd McKinney and Mike Gilbert
  • Original half-speed mastering by Jack Hunt at Mobile Fidelity
  • Matrix and pressings by RTI, Camarillo, CA
  • Cover photo by John F. Cooper
  • Liner photos by Carol Sincora and John Bonetti
  • Design by Anne Ackerman Robinson

This recording was made on Studer 24-track recorders and Trident consoltes with Ampex 456 tape at 30 inches per second. It was mixed to a Studer Mark III half-inch two-track recorder. No noise reduction, compression or limiting was used.

Thanks to Jilll and Don Stegman, Bruce Howard, World Percussion Inc. Phil Manor, Mike Flynn, Christ Andronis, Steven Lowy, Denni Sands and all at Group IV, and Charles Horton at TEAC.

Special thanks to Will Ackerman and Anne Ackerman Robinson for having the faith to make this album possible.

Other Shadowfax albums on Windham Hill

1. Shadowfax 1981

2. Shadowdance 1983

3. The Dreams of Children 1984

4. Too Far to Whisper 1986

WH 1028 William Ackerman Past Light

WH 1028 William-Ackerman-Past-Light
WH 1028 William-Ackerman-Past-Light

WH 1028 William Ackerman Past Light

Review

With 1983’s Past Light, Will Ackerman expands on the collaborations that he began to explore in earnest on 1981’s Passage, for an album that melds Ackerman’s meditative style with a larger vision of dynamic group performances.

Past Light is Ackerman’s fifth solo album, and twenty-eighth Windham Hill release. He must have been in the thick of the Windham Hill explosion, and it shows in a number of ways: the incredible stable of artists with whom he collaborates (Mark Isham, Michael Hedges, Darol Anger, Stein/Walder, Greenberg and Szmadzinski from Shadowfax, even Bay Area neighbors Kronos Quartet); the continued development of an aesthetic for group performances of Windham Hill artists, first seen on albums like Alex De Grassi’s Clockwork; and a confidence to keep pushing his vision farther, while hewing to his unique style, born out of Fahey and Kottke, but by now all his own.

While it still has poignant moments, there’s less mournfulness on Past Light than was present on Passage. There is less Erik Satie contemplation and more Robbie Basho exuberance in emotion, though stylistically Ackerman is wholly his own man.

The album opens with “Visiting” which varies enough in pacing and dynamics so that listeners are engaged and relaxed, taken on a journey with many uplifting moments. Where George Winston and Alex De Grassi write songs that are evocative of specific places at a certain time (a stream in January, a trip to Philadelphia) and Michael Hedges songs are paeans to rhythms, harmonics and dynamics, Ackerman’s work always strikes me as being about mood in and of itself. Each piece seems to be about that feeling you get when… (fill in your own very personal blank here.) Less intense and immediate than Passage, but profoundly evocative.

The fact that the moods here are varied, and often include the golden sunshine of Chuck Greenberg’s Lyricon just makes Past Light appealing to a wider audience, and a friendlier play for stalwart fans. Overall, it feels like Will was in a really good spot. Emotionally, the album it feels most like is Ackerman’s 2011 New England Roads (my current favorite of all of his albums, dare I even say it, over In Search of the Turtle’s Navel, and available exclusively at Target).

Samples

Visiting

 

Pacific II

 

Synopsis II

Track Listing

Side One: 22:11

  • Pacific II (1980) 3:09

Side Two 23:17

Liner Notes

“One always goes to great lengths at times like these to thank a phalanx of individuals for their contributions to the project as a whole. This will be no exception. Often the musicians who joined me on Past Light were given little more than a basic form in which to work, and it is no false modesty to to say that many of the compositions represented in these recordings are pure collaborations on the part of these friends and myself. To them I am sincerely grateful. I must also thank my co-producer, Steve Miller, for having the talent and vision that enabled me to try new ideas.”

William Ackerman

Credits

Produced by William Ackerman and Steven Miller

  • Engineered and mixed by Steven Miller
  • Recorded at Mobius Music, San Francisco, assistant engineer Oliver DiCicco, and at Different Fur Studios, San Francisco, assistant engineer Don Mack.
  • Mixed at Different Fur Studios, assistant engineer Dale Everingham.
  • Original mastering by Bernie Grundman, A&M Records, Hollywood, CA
  • Matrix and pressings by the Pressing Plant, Irvine, CA
  • Graphic design by Anne Ackerman Robinson and William Ackerman.
  • Photography by John Cooper, Summit, New Jersey
  • All compositions by William Ackerman
  • All selections Windham Hill Music, (BMI)

This recording was made on a Studer 24 track recorder at thirty inches per second. No noise reduction or compression was employed. The recordings were mixed digitally on a Sony PCM 1600 system, Kef speakers were used for audio monitoring and referencing on this recording.

Thanks to Harn Soper for loaning “Rain to River” back to me to record and to Dan Snow for the dream that inspired “Night Slip”. Thanks to Ervin Somogyi for the construction of my newest six-string and to Adamas strings.

  • Manufactured by Windham Hill Records
  • Windham Hill Productions Inc.
  • PO Box 9388, Stanford, CA 94305
  • Distributed by A&M Records, Inc.

Other original William Ackerman albums

  1. In Search of the Turtle’s Navel 1976
  2. It Takes a Year 1977
  3. Childhood and Memory 1979
  4. Passage 1981
  5. Past Light 1983
  6. Conferring with the Moon 1986
  7. Imaginary Roads 1988
  8. The Opening of Doors 1992
  9. The Sound of Wind Driven Rain 1998
  10. Hearing Voices 2001
  11. Returning 2004
  12. Meditations 2008
  13. New England Roads 2010

WH-1026 Windham Hill Artists An Evening with Windham Hill Live

WH 1026 evening with windham hill live
WH 1026 evening with windham hill live

WH-1026 An Evening with Windham Hill Live featuring George Winston, Alex deGrassi,  William Ackerman, Michael Hedges, Liz Story, Scott Cossu, Darol Anger, Chuck Greenberg

Review

Truly one of the great Windham Hill albums of all time, “An Evening with Windham Hill” features the classic Windham Hill artists at artistic peak of the label. While Ackerman, Winston, de Grassi continue to perform and record, often with even greater artistry than here, this album represents a clarity of vision and cohesion of styles that places it at the pinnacle of Windham Hill’s output.

Relaxed but uplifting, complex but with clarity, An Evening with Windham Hill is a required recording for any fan of the label.

Most telling about the label overall is Alex de Grassi’s introduction to Turning: Turning Back where he recounts how people tell him that they play the music at weddings and births – but “it’s really just about a trip Philadelphia.” de Grassi was writing about everyday places and moods – but touched a special chord with his fans.

Track Listings

Side One 19:59

Rickover’s Dream 4:30

  • Michael Hedges – Guitar
  • Composed by Michael Hedges
  • Michael Hedges Music (BMI)

Turning: Turning Back 9:00

  • Alex deGrassi – Guitar
  • Composed by Alex deGrassi

Clockwork 6:23

  • Alex deGrassi – Guitar
  • Chuck Greenberg – Lyricon
  • Darol Anger – Violin
  • Michael Manring – Bass
  • Michael Spiro – Percussion
  • Composed by Alex deGrassi
  • Tropo Music (BMI)

Side Two 22:01

Spare Change 5:29

  • Michael Hedges – Guitar
  • Liz Story – Piano
  • Michael Manring – Bass
  • Composed by Michael Hedges
  • Michael Hedges Music (BMI)

Visiting 4:48

  • Will Ackerman – Guitar
  • Chuck Greenberg – Lyricon
  • Michael Manring – Bass
  • Composed by Will Ackerman

Hawk Circle 5:10

  • Will Ackerman – Guitar
  • George Winston – Piano
  • Michael Hedges – Guitar
  • Composed by Will Ackerman

Reflections/Lotus Feet 6:25

  • George Winston – Piano
  • Reflections Composed by George Winston
  • Windham Hill Music (BMI)
  • Lotus Feet Composed by John McLaughlin
  • Warner Tamerlane Publishing Corp. and Chinmoy Music Inc. (BMI)

Samples

Reflections/Lotus Feet

Liner Notes and Credits

  • Produced by William Ackerman
  • AlexDe Grassi
  • Steven Miller

On October 9th, 1982, a group of ten Windham Hill musicians gathered for two shows at the Berklee Performance Center, Boston, Massachusetts. It was during those two shows that these recordings were made. The success of the Berklee Performance Center shows made it inevitable that other Windham Hill Evenings would follow, including Carnegie Hall, Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, the Wax Museum in Washington, DC, and Symphony Hall in Boston to date.

  • William Ackerman
  • Chief Executive Officer
  • Windham Hill Productions Inc.
  • Engineered and Mixed by Steven Miller
  • Recorded by the Fedco Audio Labs Remote Truck
  • Remote Recording Crew – Bill Straus (Crew Chief), Nick Gutfreund and Bob Dickson.
  • Mixed at Different Fur Studios, San Francisco
  • Assistant Engineer – Don Mack
  • Original half-speed mastering by Bernie Grundman, A&M
  • Matrix and Pressings by The Pressing Plant, Irvine, CA
  • Cover photo by Jerry Lukowicz
  • Design by Anne Ackerman Robinson

All selections published by Windham Hill Music (BMI) except where noted. KEF speakers were used for audio monitoring and referencing on this recording.

Thanks to Steve Backer, Fred Taylor, Bill Strauss, Sue Auclair, Eric Jackson, Ron Della Chiesa and Al Goldman.

  • Manufactured by Windham Hill Records
  • Windham Hill Productions Inc.
  • Box 9388, Stanford, CA 94305

WH 1024 Windham Hill Records Sampler ’82

Windham Hill Records Sampler ’82

Selections from the Windham Hill Records Album Catalogue

Review

Windham Hill was truly hitting its stride in 1981-82. It took four years for Ackerman to release the first nine Windham Hill Albums, and of those, only six remained in print. Numbers 14-23 came in just over a single year, and each became a defining album for the label – either the first release of important new artists such as Liz Story, or genre-establishing discs like Alex de Grassi’s Clockwork. Sampler ’82 excises one track from each of the nine discs that Windham Hill released since the initial sampler came out in 1981.

Side One opens with the rather somber “Remedios” and continues in a generally solemn vein throughout the side, with Hedges’ “The Happy Couple” being the happy exception. Side Two picks things up a bit, and ends with the upbeat “Clockwork,” an ensemble piece which will be familiar to any Windham fan today thanks to its appearance on countless samplers since its initial release.

Ackerman was enraptured with the new digital technology of the time – his album Passage was one of the first commercial digital releases in the world. Each of the tracks here were remastered in digital – at some expense to the dynamics, detail and warmth of each of the recordings. Indeed, only “The Happy Couple” benefits from the increased detail and brightness of the remastering. Nonetheless, unless you’re a die-hard vinyl fan with a revealing system, the sound quality is still excellent.

In the end, I’m sure Sampler ’82 has its fans – it was the first introduction to many of these artists for many tens of thousands of people. However, the album is a broad overview rather than a cohesive statement of where the label was at the time, and each of the albums represented are strong and complete on their own. Nonetheless, while I do hesitate to second-guess Ackerman’s selections, for the modern listener, I would recommend you skip this one and buy the individual albums from the era. Sampler ’82 is an important snapshot of Windham Hill’s development, but not necessarily the place to start as a listener.

Track Listing

Side One:

  • Remedios 5:46
  • William Ackerman
  • Passage C-1014
  • Windham Hill Music BMI
  • Produced by William Ackerman
  • Blossom/Meadow 4:04
  • George Winston
  • Winter into Spring C-1019
  • Windham Hill Music BMI
  • Produced by George Winston and William Ackerman
  • The Happy Couple 3:20
  • Michael Hedges
  • Breakfast in the Field C-1017
  • Michael Hedges Music BMI
  • Administered by Windham Hill Music BMI
  • Produced by William Ackerman
  • Minou’s Waltz
  • Ira Stein & Russel Walder
  • Elements C-1020
  • Windham Hill Music BMI
  • Produced by William Ackerman
  • A Thousand Teardrops
  • Shadowfax
  • Shadowfax C-1022
  • Greenshadow Music BMI
  • Administered by Windham Hill Music BMI
  • Produced by Chuck Greenberg

Side Two:

  • Wedding Rain 5:44
  • Liz Story
  • Solid Colors C-1023
  • Windham Hill Music BMI
  • Produced by William Ackerman
  • Tideline 4:34
  • Darol Anger & Barbara Higbie
  • Tideline C-1021
  • Slow Baby Music BMI
  • Administered by Windham Hill Music BMI
  • Produced by Darol Anger
  • Purple Mountain 5:29
  • Scott Cossu
  • Wind Dance C-1016
  • Silver Crow Music BMI
  • Administered by Windham Hill Music BMI
  • Produced by George Winston
  • Clockwork
  • Alex de Grassi
  • Clockwork C-1018
  • Tropo Music BMI
  • Administered by Windham Hill Music BMI
  • Produced by Alex de Grassi

 

 

Liner Notes

  • Digital Transfers, Editing and Mastering by Jack Hunt, JVC Cutting Ctr., Hollywood, CA
  • Cover Photo by Tom Szalay
  • Design by William and Anne Ackerman
  • Manufactured by Windham Hill Records
  • A Division of Windham Hill Productions Inc.
  • Box 9388 Stanford, CA 94305
  • (c) (p) Windham Hill Records 1982

All of the recordings included in the Windham Hill Sampler ’82 are thirty inches per second, no noise reduction analog masters with the exception of “Remedios” which is a digital recording. This collection was transferred to digital and mastered as a digital recording to maintain the sound quality of the master recordings. KEF speakers were used in audio referencing.

WH 1022 Shadowfax Shadowfax

WH 1022 Shadowfax Shadowfax

Review

Shadowfax is the eponymous second release from the atmospheric fusion group, and the twenty-second release on Windham Hill. With a strong Asian and Native American influence on the music, there is a different feel to this release than the folk, classical and chamber jazz releases of their label-mates. And while this is fusion and not rock – there are rock underpinnings throughout the album. While this release isn’t as dynamic as all later albums, there is a drive and flow that comes through even on the quietest tracks.

As for the sound – this recording is an excellent litmus test of your system. While you can enjoy the music anywhere, it will sound compressed and more like atmospheric background music than the eastern-inspired jazz that it is. If you play the vinyl and your system doesn’t sound detailed and dynamic, then your system could use some extra resolving power. You can follow each instrument throughout every song and each piece comes to life. Phil’s bass is tight and yet full-bodied, and the ever-present percussion sparkles throughout each track. When I see someone dismiss this album as lacking any engagement or dynamics, I blame their reproduction of it, not the music. That being said, for the first 10 years I owned this album, I mainly played it on a home-made cassette through an old Sony receiver, and enjoyed it just as much as I do today.

As a bit of trivia, the closing sound on Vajra that I always took as a dog is actually Emil Richards dragging a rubber balled mallet over a marimba key, according to Phil Maggini in a 2013 Facebook comment.

Shadowfax members are active on the web, catch up with them on Facebook and MySpace.

Unfortunately, Stuart Nevitt, Chuck Greenberg and Bruce Malament  have all passed away. Links to their obituaries are below.

http://www.facebook.com/shadowfaxmusic?ref=ts#!/shadowfaxmusic?v=wall&viewas=1196427542&ref=ts

http://www.ilike.com/artist/Chuck+Greenberg/

New York Times Obituary for Chuck Greenberg: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/09/obituaries/chuck-greenberg-musician-dies-at-45.html

In a 2019 Facebook post, GE Stinson writes:

“Even though I have subjective personal issues with both albums (Shadowfax and Shadowdance), I like those records for different reasons. For us, the eponymous WH album was about focusing on a different aspect of our musical roots. Creating the music for both of those albums was an intense, wonderful experience, pivotal for the band, and done under a lot of pressure and stress. It’s a cliche but true that, at that point, Shadowfax was a family… with all the love, sadness, anger, forgiveness, etc that comes with any family.”

Stinson continues “The band had just reunited, we were able to record and do gigs so we were all happy about that. Each album had its own set of problems, struggles, and we were working with a very limited budgets but we made it work and, for the most part, we had fun.”

GE Stinson Shadowfax Quote

Joy Greenberg has written the biography “A Pause in the Rain” about Chuck, and maintains his web site:  http://www.chuckgreenberg.com/cgindex.htm

You can find Joy’s site, and samples from her book here: http://www.joyhornergreenberg.com/jghome.htm She shares fascinating anecdotes and details about the band, as well as personal remembrances, in an easy engaging style; I highly recommend it for any Shadowfax fan.

Joy has generously permitted the reprint of an excerpt here:

Excerpt from “A Pause in the Rain” by Joy Greenberg:

There soon evolved a microcosmic musical community that could provide work for a lot of people. The timing was perfect—it became a little engine, allowing everyone to play and record with each other. Phil and Chuck became creatures of habit, starting a rehearsal schedule with a day-in-day-out routine, knowing the process was essential to their growth and viability as musicians. Robit did, indeed, manage to attract the backing of a label and cut the album Resident Alien with Chuck, Phil, drummer Stu Nevitt and guitarist G.E backing him up. By then Stu and G.E. had moved out from Chicago and were rehearsing with Chuck and Phil in a variety of bands, including one fronted by another old friend from the Windy City, Morris Dollison, aka Cash McCall. The Cash McCall band featured all the blues songs, like “Sweet Home Chicago,” the guys had grown up listening to and playing.

“It was through this musical network that Chuck’s—and Shadowfax’s—Big Break arrived. Robit had met another guitarist, Alex de Grassi, in London, where he was playing music in the streets, subways and folk clubs during the summer of ’73. Robit had kept in touch with Alex and had been urging him to collaborate somehow with Chuck.

Meanwhile, Alex had established himself as the premier solo instrumental guitarist on the seminal New Age label, Windham Hill. As Windham Hill cofounder Will Ackerman’s cousin, Alex was in an influential position, something that did not go unnoticed by Chuck. He admired Alex’s artistry and was eager to meet him. The feeling was mutual; Alex sent Chuck the tape of a guitar part to a new piece he was working on and invited Chuck to contribute a lyricon part. Chuck was only too happy to oblige. Then one day in the latter part of ’81, Chuck, Robit and I drove up to San Francisco from L.A. in Ruby. I dropped them off at Alex’s house in Noe Valley and went out to visit some friends while Chuck and Alex rehearsed some tunes for Alex’s upcoming album Clockwork. When I returned later, I heard a gorgeous melody emanating from Alex’s as I parked the car in front. It was the song, “Clockwork.”

Alex was impressed as well. They ended up recording two pieces. “Everybody went apeshit,” Alex said.

Indeed, they did. It seemed that all who heard Chuck’s lyricon were enchanted. Alex’s album Clockwork scored a big hit on radio and at retail, as well as with the powers at Windham Hill. As a result of its success, Chuck was emboldened to propose an album to Will Ackerman, who initially believed that Chuck wanted to do a solo project. Chuck’s task became convincing Will that what Will really wanted was a Shadowfax album, something he managed to accomplish without Will’s ever hearing the band play.

Chuck sensed that Will would not approve of the “outside,” heavily electrified, screaming-for-attention tunes that had been recorded by Shadowfax on Watercourse Way. It just didn’t jibe with the primarily acoustic, mellow, laid back sounds for which Windham Hill was gaining recognition. And Chuck knew better than to invite Will to a showcase and see this “electric fusion monster quartet”—the antithesis of Windham Hill music—live. It would have been an invitation to disaster, sending the self-avowed hater of electronic music running for cover. Will’s interest in recording Chuck was based upon Chuck’s essentially acoustic approach to Alex’s record Clockwork. To accept this offer on the basis of Will’s perception, completely ignoring the nature of his label’s musical direction, and to present him with an electric manifesto, would have been unfair to him and deal suicide. No, meeting and hearing Shadowfax was definitely not the way to get a deal with Will.

However, the band had a card up its sleeve—one it could play without any negative sense of compromise or loss of musical integrity. There had always been an acoustic side of the band that they very much enjoyed but that was never allowed to come to fruition. Now they simply took advantage of the opportunity to explore it further, creating a discipline that was at once challenging and creative. Chuck figured out how to convince Will that Shadowfax would be the perfect ensemble addition to the label’s roster of solo artists.

Fortunately, Will Ackerman was so smitten by Chuck’s lyricon from the moment he heard it that he was willing to go ahead with Chuck’s plan to record. “Suddenly there was this indescribable, ethereal sound,” Will said. He and Alex were sitting in a park in Silicon Valley, listening to “Clockwork,” and this “unbelievable sound, the music of angels.” Alex told him that “the angel responsible for this sound was one Chuck Greenberg, and that the instrument was called the lyricon.” When Chuck joined Alex in concert at the Great American Music Hall, Will was there, and “there was that sound of angels again.” After the show he spoke with Chuck, who promptly told him about Shadowfax, and it was decided, more or less on the spot, to record a Shadowfax album.

At first, I was incredulous that Chuck would want to go to all the extra trouble to get the band back together: At this point I had never heard them play live.

“Why bother with them when you have the chance to do your own thing?”

“Because,” he said, “I will always have the opportunity to do my own thing, but I may not always be able to work with this band. And we never finished what we started out to say.”

Track Listing

Side One 18:02

  1. Angel’s Flight 4:00 C. Greenberg
  2. Vajra 4:20 G.E. Stinson
  3. Wheel of Dreams 4:46 G.E. Stinson & C. Greenberg
  4. Oriental Eyes 4:56 P. Maggini

Side Two 16:23

  1. Move the Clouds 3:08 G.E. Stinson
  2. A Thousand Teardrops 4:15 C. Greenberg
  3. Ariki (Hummingbird Spirit) 3:10 G.E. Stinson & C. Greenberg
  4. Marie 5:50, G.E. Stinson

Samples

Stream the entire album via MySpace

Shadowfax

Emil Richards, circa 1970's. photo courtesy Phil Maggini.
Emil Richards, circa 1970’s. photo courtesy Phil Maggini.

Additional Instrumentation:

  • Emil Richards: contra bass marimba, conga, Thai vibes on Ariki; kelon vibes anvil, gong on Oriental Eyes, contra bass marimba, rhythm logs, bell tree, tambourine on Vajra; vibes and crotales on Wheel of Dreams, windchimes and bells on Angel’s Flight. The percussion ensemble on Ariki was arramged by Emil Richards.
  • Alex de Grassi: 12 string acoustic guitar on the right channel of Vajra
  • Scott Cossu: piano on A Thousand Teardrops
  • Jamii Szmadzinski: violin and baritone violin on Move the Clouds and Marie
  • Bruce Malament: Fender Rhodes on Oriental Eyes

Credits

  • Produced by Chuck Greenberg
  • Recorded in May and June of 1982 at Studio America, Pasadena, CA
  • Recorded and Mixed by Joe Pollard
  • Second Engineer: Max Reese
  • Assistant Engineers: Pitt Kinsolving and Shep Lonsdale
  • Original Half-Speed Mastering by Jack Hunt, JVC Cutting Center
  • Matrix and Pressing by Record Technology Inc., Camarillo, CA
  • Cover Photo by Greg Edmonds
  • Design by Anne Ackerman

This recording was made on a modified MCI JH 16 recorder at 30 inches per second, and mixed to a Studer Mark III half-inch two-track recorder, using no noise reduction, limiting or compression.

Thanks to Joy Horner, Dave Below, Marty Lishon, and World Percussion. Thanks also to Sherman Clay Pianos for the use of the Kimball Bosendorfer Grand Piano, and to Zeus Audio Systems. Special thanks to Joe Pollard, to Emil Richards for the magic, and to Windham Hill.

  • All Selections Greenshadow Music (BMI)
  • Administered by Windham Hill Music (BMI)
  • Manufactured by Windham Hill Productions Inc.

(c) (p) Windham Hill Records 1982

WH-1022

WHS-C 1022

WH 1018 Alex de Grassi Clockwork

WH 1018 DeGrassi_Clockwork

Review

The first true ensemble album in the Windham Hill style – Clockwork really defined the label’s sound for the next several years. Alex de Grassi proves that not only is he one of his generations finest guitarists, he has a larger musical vision, ambition and extraordinary taste in collaborators. The players all bring both a technical and lyrical deftness to their parts, and as the album name implies, there is a musical interplay that creates a rhythmic whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Fans of de Grassi’s solo guitar work are rewarded on the second side with the Bougainvillea Suite opening – gorgeous and thoughtful guitar music.

Clockwork can be hard to find, and it is not the last word in either de Grassi’s or the label’s collective work, but it’s important as a new creative step in the genre-defining label, and a worthy listen in and of itself.

Recommended.

Comments

Have a thought, memory or experience to share about this album or any of the musicians? Share it in the comments section below.

Track Listing

Side One:

Thirty-six 6:34
guitar, piano, percussion

Two Color Dream 6:25
guitar, fretless bass, soprano sax, drums

Clockwork 6:54
guitar, lyricon, fretless bass, percussion

Side Two: Bougainvillea Suite

Opening 1:49
solo guitar
Bougainvillea 3:35
solo guitar
Elegy 1:14
solo guitar
Sorta Samba 5:55
guitar, violin, mandolin, bass
Part Five 4:43
guitar, soprano sax, lyricon, violin, mandolin, bass

Credits

Musicians:

Alex de Grassi: guitar
Darol Anger: violin
Scott Cossu: piano
Chuck Greenberg: soprano sax, lyricon
Mike Marshall: mandolin
Patrick O’hearn: fretless bass
Michael Spiro: percussion
Robb Wasserman: bass
Kurt Wortman: drums

Produced by Alex de Grassi

Engineered and Mixed by Oliver DiCicco, Mobius Music, San Francisco
Original Half-Speed Mastering by Stan Ricker, Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs, Chatsworth, CA
Matrix and Pressing by Record Technology, Camarillo, CA

Graphic Design by Anne Ackerman
Cover Monoprint and Liner Photo by Anne Ackerman

All Compositions by Alex de Grassi
All Selections Tropo Music BMI
Administered by Windham Hill Music BMI
Manufactured by Windham Hill Music BMI
Manufactured by Windham Hill Records Box 9388, Stanford, CA 94305

(p) Alex de Grassi 1981

© Windham Hill Records 1981

Special thanks to Nick and Esther Baran, Jeff Heiman, and Elaine Marans for their support.

Other recordings by Alex de Grassi

Turning: Turning Back WH-1004, Cassette WT-1004

Slow Circle WH-1009, Cassette WT-1009

  • Alex de Grassi
  • Clockwork
  • WHS C-1108
  • WH 1008

WH 1017 Michael Hedges Breakfast in the Field

WH 1017 Breakfast in the Field Hedges

Review

Michael Hedges was playing in a Palo Alto coffeeshop when William Ackerman heard him and signed him on the spot. Good move. Hedges is arguably the best acoustic guitarist to ever play, with apologies to Ackerman, de Grassi,  Django Reinhardt and Bucky Pizzarelli.

“Breakfast in the Field” is Hedges’ first album, and the seventeenth Windham Hill release. It’s a deceptive album – what sounds simple has incredible technical skills behind it; what sounds pastoral becomes funky and urban. When the album came out, the buzz was not only that you had to hear Michael Hedges, but you had to see him playing. His style was so new and different that it made it seem as if the instrument had simply been waiting all these generations for its true master to come along. “Breakfast” gives you the first taste of the tremendous talent that Hedges developed before he died at the age of 43 in a car crash north of San Francisco.

Because “Breakfast in the Field” opens with two slow-paced songs, the casual listener could easily be fooled into playing the album quietly as background music. But turn it up, pay a little attention, and it will quickly become apparent just how much this 34-minute acoustic album can rock.

Michael Manring, who was so omnipresent on Windham Hill that it seemed as if he functioned as a house bassist, makes his first appearance here. George Winston, on the heels of “Autumn” and his successful contribution to William Ackerman’s “Passage” also performs here. In both cases, the effect is to complement and not overwhelm the immersive soundscapes created by Hedges.

In a 1987 concert, Hedges gives an introduction to “The Funky Avocado” that is revealing about his open-minded approach to composition and how he brought in so many influences to his work. Says Hedges: “This tune has a little bit of a cross cultural bent to it, but it has more of an American bent to it. from the time where I lived above a health food store just down the street from a gay disco called The Pink Hippopotamus. I used to be trying to write music up there, trying to… maybe it would be just after dinner and I’d be trying to get some work done, and The Pink Hippo was always sending me back ‘boom boom boom’ and maybe the bass line would come through, ‘bum Bum BUM bum Bum BUM,’ so rather than trying to compete with it, I decided to  try to incorporate some of the elements. So that’s how ‘The Funky Avocado’ came about. It starts out with a medium R&B tempo, slows down into some heavy rock and it finishes up in a fit of disco fury”.

The sound quality is outstanding – Michael’s guitar is full of body and resonance,  detailed, and all of one cloth. There’s an interesting side story regarding the guitar Hedges used for several of the tracks: “Eleven Small Roaches,” “Babytoes” and “Two Days Old”. As noted on Hedges’ memorialized “Nomadland” site: “If Michael’s art is driven by openness, the fates were on his side just after he finished The Road To Return. At a concert in Oregon in 1994, Michael was approached by a woman who returned a guitar to him which had been stolen from his van fifteen years earlier while opening for Jerry Garcia. The custom guitar (built by luthier Ken DuBourg and heard on much of Breakfast in the Field) was in dreadful condition, but Michael invested in its restoration and the instrument’s presence wound up becoming the inspiration for several of the tunes heard on Oracle.”

“As Michael points out, Oracle fits perfectly into the chronology of his own life—“The Road to Return was a search for ‘Who am I?’ Then my old guitar was returned and I thought, ‘Yeah, this is part of who I am.’ Now, I’m open. I have a feeling something new is on the horizon for me, because, after all, how many ways can you slap a guitar? Since I’ve been writing songs, I’m more conscious of the music I’m after. It shouldn’t be seen as a new phase of my playing, but just more of me.”

This is an essential recording for any guitarist, lover of acoustic music or Windham Hill.

Comments

Have a thought, memory or experience to share about this album or Michael Hedges? Leave a comment below.

Track Listing

Side One

  • Layover 2:30
  • The Happy Couple 3:20
  • Eleven Small Roaches 3:00
  • The Funky Avocado 2:03
  • Baby Toes 2:10
  • Breakfast in the Field 2:24

Side Two

  • Two Days Old 4:46
  • Peg Leg Speed King 3:20
  • The Unexpected Visitor 2:46
  • Silent Anticipations 3:23
  • Lenono 4:03

Samples

Michael was a phenomenal live performer. Samples below are largely from concerts – he tells great stories about each song, and you get a sense of his showmanship.

The Happy Couple

Eleven Small Roaches

Baby Toes

Breakfast in the Field

The Unexpected Visitor

Silent Anticipations

Lenono

Credits

  • Michael Hedges: Guitar
  • Michael Manring: Fretless Bass
  • George Winston: Piano
  • All Compositions by Michael Hedges
  • All Selections Michael Hedges Music (BMI)
  • Administered by Windham Hill Music (BMI)
  • Manufactured by Windham Hill Records Box 9388, Stanford, CA 94305

©(p) Windham Hill Records 1981

This album was recorded without overdubs or multitracking on a MCI JH 110 A analogue two-track tape recorder at 30 inches per second through a Neve 8036 console with minimal equalization. No noise reduction was employed. The guitar was close-miked in stereo with a matched pair of AKG 452 EB condenser microphones in a cardioid pattern.

This album is dedicated to my teachers of composition: E. J. Ulrich who sent me on my way, Jean Ivey who let me go my own way, and  Morris Cotel who asked me where I was going and why.

Thanks to Ervin Somogyi of Berkeley, CA who built the splendid guitar used on most of the tunes in this recording. Thanks also to Ken DuBourg of Arbutus, MD who made the guitar used on Eleven Small Roaches, Babytoes, and Two Days Old.

WH 1016 Scott Cossu Wind Dance

WH 1016 Wind Dance Scott Cossu

Review

Scott Cossu’s “Wind Dance” is the artists first album, and the 16th release on Windham Hill. Wind Dance is the first ensemble recording on Windham Hill that most people are familiar with, but Linda Waterfall’s “Mary’s Garden” and the eponymous “Kidd Afrika” R&B album predates it by some 5 years.

Cossu is a thoughtful and talented player, and the second side of the album in particular is strong. Nonetheless, “Wind Dance” is lighter than Cossu’s later works. Cossu and labelmate de Grassi explore music that will be familiar to listeners of the Pat Metheny Group recordings of the time.

Reviews at the time were deservedly positive. From Cossu’s web site:


“Cossu weds ethnic diversity to his natural style of ethereal piano. His enticing polyrhythms are fit for ecstatic dancing. A sparkling record.”
– The Boston Globe

“Undoubtedly, Scott Cossu is one of the jazz luminaries of the future.”
-Billboard Magazine

Recommended for Scott Cossu fans, Windham Hill collectors, or fans of Pat Metheny’s early work. Otherwise, look to Scott Cossu’s later recordings which are overall stronger.

Track Listing

Side One

  1. Jamaica 5:00
  2. Demeter/Rejoicing 5:32
  3. Kinsa 5:04
  4. Purple Mountain 5:29

Side Two

  1. Freija 6:25
  2. Almost Like Heaven 4:22
  3. Wind Dance 7:44

Produced by George Winston

  • All Compositions by Scott Cossu
  • All Selections are Silver Crow Music (BMI)
  • Administered by Windham Hill Music (BMI)
  • Manufactured by Windham Hill Records
  • A Division of Windham Hill Productions, Inc.
  • Box 9388, Stanford, CA 94305

Distributed by A&M Records, Inc.

©(p) Windham Hill Records 1981

Research Notes

Dan Reiter’s Biography from the 1981 “Passage” Album:

DAN REITER, CELLO

Dan Reiter, 29, has for the past six years been co-principal cellist with the Oakland Symphony. He attended the conservatory at Cincinatti University and studied with Jack Kirstein. In addition to his work with the symphony, Dan composes unusual chamber music – incorporating folk and jazz elements along with classical – for his trio of clarinet, bass, and cello.