A Brief Biography of Paul Winter

Winter's musical journey started in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where he began playing drums, piano and clarinet after the age of five, then fell in love with saxophone in the fourth grade. He embarked on his first professional tour at the age of seventeen after playing with several bands throughout high school. At Chicago's Northwestern University, Winter formed a jazz sextet, which won the 1961 Intercollegiate Jazz Festival and was signed to a contract with Columbia Records by the legendary producer John Hammond. In 1962 the Paul Winter Sextet was sent by the U.S. State Department on a six-month tour of Latin America, which proved to be a true mingling of cultures and an exchange of musical and social ideas. That same year, at the invitation of Jackie Kennedy, Winter's sextet became the first jazz group to officially perform at the White House.

The rich sound textures and special blend of the distinctive acoustic instrumental voices of Paul Winter and the consort give Winter's Earth Music its unique and alluring quality; the recorded sounds from the natural world are interwoven with classical and ethnic traditions, and the whole is infused with the spontaneous spirit of jazz. Hearing the songs of humpback whales for the first time in 1968 further expanded Winter's concept of a musical community. The haunting, "blues-ey," communal celebration of a howling pack of wolves and the beautifully complex songs of the whales planted the seeds of ideas that blossomed on a number of Winter's later albums.

Bringing vitality through music and awakening people to the plight of endangered species through the beauty of their sounds, Paul Winter has been recognized time and again for his musical contributions to the environment. Winter has received a Global 500 Award from the United Nations, the Award of Excellence from the United Nations Environment Program, the Joseph Wood Krutch Medal for service to animals from the United States Humane Society, and the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, among others. Recently his work as musician and as musical ambassador for the natural world has been honored with the Connecticut Music Educators' Association Music Advocate of the Year Award, an Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University, the National Arbor Day's Promise to the Earth Award, an honorary doctorate from Juniata College (Pennsylvania), and the Spirit of the City Award presented at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Winter formed Living Music Records in 1980, and in doing so created a recording forum for the exploration of "musical-ecological sound-vision," enabling the consort musicians to record their special Earth Music and reach the human community with music of the wider earth community. The timeless harmonies of Living Music Records are usually recorded in Winter's barn-studio surrounded by protected woodland, sometimes in natural acoustic spaces such as the Grand Canyon, and frequently beneath the vaults of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the world's largest Gothic cathedral, where the consort members are artists-in-residence. It is here, under the vast spans of the cathedral, that the consort performs their major annual celebrations. Of these solstice concerts, Winter explains, "people get a sense of community - a sense of the whole wide community of life - which is one of the best things we could do with our music." Winter's acclaimed Solstice Celebrations and Earth Mass are among the most popular seasonal events in New York City.