An accomplished guitarist and producer, Will Ackerman established Windham Hill Records as a leading independent outlet for acoustic, folk, and ambient sounds, thereby opening doors for talents that included George Winston. His own recording career began in 1976 with The Search for the Turtle's Navel and has since encompassed dozens of releases, among them 1998’s Imaginary Roads, 2008’s Meditations, and 2011’s New England Roads, each blending jazz, new acoustic, and pop sensibilities.
Although he had taken up the guitar at age twelve, Ackerman left college to work as a carpenter and founded his first enterprise under the name Windham Hill Builders. A native of Palo Alto, he wrote instrumental pieces for Stanford University stage productions; at the urging of friends he captured a selection of those pieces on tape as In Search of the Turtle's Navel in 1976. Issued as the inaugural title on his fledgling Windham Hill label, the album met with unexpected demand and drew him fully into the recording industry.
Thereafter Ackerman maintained a steady output of solo albums while producing landmark Windham Hill projects for George Winston, Shadowfax, Michael Hedges, Alex de Grassi, and Liz Story and holding multiple roles within the company. Following the 1992 sale of Windham Hill he moved to Vermont, where he constructed the Imaginary Road studio and has since produced both his own work and that of other artists. In 2018 he issued the career-spanning collection Was It This Lifetime: Pieces for Guitar 1995-2011.
