Paul Winter

Recognition arrived for Winter in 1961 when he won a jazz competition for college musicians at Notre Dame University, after which judge John Hammond secured the ensemble a Columbia recording contract. The following year the group embarked on a State Department-sponsored journey through Latin America, an experience that first prompted Winter to reconsider his musical direction. By 1967 he had moved away from conventional jazz structures, assembling instead a configuration that incorporated instruments from outside the Western tradition. Rechristened the Paul Winter Consort, the ensemble emerged as an early proponent of world music, merging jazz with elements drawn from African, Asian, and South American traditions. Guitarist Ralph Towner, oboist Paul McCandless, and sitarist and percussionist Collin Walcott, all drawn to further experimentation, departed in the early 1970s to establish the group Oregon. Winter meanwhile turned his attention to environmental concerns, collaborating with Greenpeace and exploring ways to fuse music with the natural world. He captured recordings of whales off the California coast and built his 1977 album Common Ground around those sounds. Since 1980 he has led a nonprofit organization devoted to heightening awareness of music’s ties to spiritual and ecological well-being. He continues to present concerts on the group’s behalf, often in locations that invite interaction with ambient sound such as the Grand Canyon and New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. In 1998 he joined Oscar Castro-Neves for Brazilian Days; Celtic Solstice appeared the next year, and Journey with the Sun followed in early 2001.