Excellent retrospective of Winter’s new age music, but let’s remember the 1st Winter Consort album!
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Paul Winter began his career as a jazz musician and did a number of very fine Brazilian-flavored albums. Then—or so the albums you can find would seem to indicate—he dramatically moved over to what was soon to become “new age” music, more contemplative. Wolf Eyes is a very fine collection of some of Paul Winter and the Winter Consort’s “new age” works, and it is certainly worth a listen. These are fine compositions. BUT I want to make a plea here for someone, anyone(!!) to re-release that first Winter Consort album, the one produced by Paul Stookey. That album was the bridge between Winter’s earlier jazz and his move toward more contemplative music. It was, in fact, what we should call “contemplative” or “environmental” jazz: deep, darkening, brilliant compositions from Winter and his group of musicians, most of whom became household names in the space between jazz and new age music: Ralph Towner, Colin Walcott, Paul McCandless, Glenn Moore, and others. God, that was an awesome album, and, as far as I can tell, it was never even released as a CD, actually, maybe not even in cassette form. It remains THE most neglected, “lost” masterpiece in the history of music. Really.
