The Gene & Shelley Enlow Recital Hall presents George Winston

The Gene & Shelley Enlow Recital Hall presents piano legend George Winston on Sunday, March 4, 2012 at 3:00 pm.  Performing selections from his recently released solo piano recording, Love Will Come – The Music of Vince Guaraldi (Vol. 2), the concert is a rare opportunity to see the renowned musician in the intimate and acoustically pristine concert venue at Kean University.  Guaraldi is the late jazz pianist, popularized by his now iconic underscoring of the Peanuts television specials.

George Winston himself is a noted composer and he will delight audiences with his original works at Enlow as well.  Self-described as a "rural folk piano" player, he was among the earliest and most successful proponents of the genre of contemporary instrumental music later dubbed “New Age.”  Although born in Michigan in 1949, he was raised primarily in Montana, where the extreme seasonal changes he experienced greatly influencing the pastoral feel of his music.  Some of Winston’s most profoundly beautiful works – Autumn, Winter Into Spring, December, Summer - are based on the stunning magic of the changing seasons.

“My biggest inspiration is the seasons,” said Winston, “because the seasons are color, and they’re different every place; for example if it’s winter, it’s a different kind of winter in one place than the other.  Growing up, there was one radio station, no television, so the seasons were the entertainment; you rake the leaves and jump in a pile, or go out and sled, or go swimming in the summer.  The seasons were the movies and the TV and all of the entertainment, the seasons were it.  That just stayed with me, that’s the main thing, I’m always thinking of it.  I might be in a big city, or in the country, but it’s still you know, the same date everywhere.”

Even as a child, Winston preferred instrumental music over vocal performances, counting among his early heroes Booker T. & the MG's, Floyd Cramer, and the Ventures.  He did not take up music until after high school, however, beginning with organ and electric piano, but moving to acoustic piano by 1971.  Influenced by the stride piano of Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson, Winston turned from rock and R&B to jazz, and soon released his first solo piano effort, Ballads and Blues in1972.  Winston's music continued to grow in popularity and influence in the years to follow, but in typically enigmatic fashion, he virtually dropped from sight for the remainder of the 1980s, resurfacing only in 1986 to score a reading of The Velveteen Rabbit by actress Meryl Streep.

In 1991, Winston returned to action, completing his seasonal cycle with Summer; and Forest followed three years later.  In 1996, he paid tribute to another of his greatest influences with Linus & Lucy: The Music of Vince Guaraldi.  A compilation album, All the Seasons of George Winston, was released in the spring of 1998, followed a year later by Plains. The new millennium brought anniversary editions of several of his landmark albums, as well as the 2001 album Remembrance: A Memorial Benefit, which was Winston's response to the tragic events of September 11, 2001.  His 2002 release, Night Divides the Day, focused on the music of one of his earliest influences, The Doors.  An impressive solo piano outing, Gulf Coast Blues & Impressions, was released as a benefit set for hurricane relief in 2006.

Grammy-winner Winston has released over a dozen albums of largely his own piano music that have sold in droves worldwide.  His piercingly evocative and utterly special music, and the successful career he has created with his incredible talent, are extraordinary.  Over the last thirty-plus years, Winston and his treasured Steinway have bridged the gap between startlingly gorgeous and emotional new age compositions and beautifully familiar traditional melodies to form one of music’s most unique and lasting legacies.

“Sometimes when you have a project inside you, it must be kind of like being pregnant or something,” mused Winston.  “You have an idea, I mean, it’s growing, without you doing anything.  And then something maybe fertilizes the idea, like an event or a scene, then it grows and it grows, and then you want to put it on canvas, or on a record.  Things come to me pretty naturally, I don’t really write them down, and I don’t do too much repetition.  I never want to compose a song, and I never try to compose a song, it’s just something that happens, occasionally.”

Tickets to George Winston at Enlow Hall are $35 and can be purchased by calling Kean Stage Box Office at 908.737.SHOW (7469), online at http://enlowhall.kean.edu or in person at Kean University’s Wilkins Theater Box Office.  Enlow Recital Hall is located at 215 North Avenue, Hillside, NJ 07205.

WQXR is a media sponsor of Gene & Shelley Enlow Recital Hall.  For complete Enlow Hall 2011-12 Season information, please visit the website or contact Ms. Cory Ransom, Director, Operations (908) 737-5932, ransomco@kean.edu.