George Winston, who became a best-selling musician during the decades when pop and rock dominated the musical landscape, playing soothing piano instruments in a style often described as New Age but which he likes to call “country folk piano”. named, died Sunday in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He was 74.
His publicist, Jesse Cutler, said the cause was cancer. Mr. Winston, who lived in the Bay Area, battled multiple cancers for years while continuing to record and perform. He attributed a bone marrow transplant in 2013 to prolonging his life. He resided in Williamsport, near where his tour manager lived, Mr Cutler said.
Mr. Winston released his first album, Ballads and Blues, in 1972, but it was Autumn, released in 1980 on fledgling Palo Alto, California-based Windham Hill label, that launched his career. It consisted of seven solo piano compositions which, like most of his works, were inspired by nature. They bore simple titles – “Sea”, “Moon”, “Woods” – and struck a chord with many listeners. Sales soared into the hundreds of thousands.
“By attuning his emotions to the calm, order, and power of nature, rather than the violent, frenetic tones of our contemporary urban landscape, Winston Winston offers us a perfect sonic and psychological antidote to the urban,” wrote Lee Underwood in a DownBeat review. ” Craziness.”
Mr. Winston continued the calendar theme with two 1982 albums, December and Winter Into Spring, and again with a 1991 release, Summer. His 1994 record Forest won a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album – a category relatively new at the time – and he was nominated four more times.
These nominations were a testament to the breadth of his musical interests. Two – for “Plains” (1999) and “Montana: A Love Story” (2004) – were nominated for Best New Age Album, but he was also nominated for “The Velveteen Rabbit” (1984; Meryl Streep provided). Best Children’s Recording nominates Narration) and Best Pop Instrumental Album for Night Divides the Day: The Music of the Doors (2002).
Mr. Winston recorded two albums of music by Vince Guaraldi, the jazz pianist best known for composing music for the animated television specials “Peanuts.” In 2012 he released George Winston: Harmonica Solos and founded his own label, Dancing Cat Records, in 1983 to record exponents of Hawaiian slack-key guitar, a genre he particularly admired.
He was never particularly concerned with attempts by critics and others to pigeonhole his music or musical interests.
“I think putting a label on music is the most futile thing to do,” he told United Press International in 1984, “besides giving a name to religion.”
George Otis Winston III was born on February 11, 1949 in Hart, Michigan near Lake Michigan to George and Mary (Bohannon) Winston. His father was a geologist and his mother was a business manager.
He grew up in Mississippi, Florida and Montana. He said his years in Montana were instrumental in instilling the deep appreciation of nature and the changing seasons that later inspired his music. Even after leaving the state to live elsewhere, including on the West Coast, he occasionally returned to recharge his batteries.
“I am very grateful that I spent a lot of time growing up in this beautiful state,” he wrote in Montana Song, a 1989 essay published on his website, “and I can say that I’ve reached the modest, usable level.” Without the inspiration and feelings I now get from Montana and from my memories of my childhood there, it would not have been possible to get there, both musically and spiritually.”
Mr Winston took piano lessons as a child but didn’t stick with it. The Doors’ debut album in 1967 rekindled his musical interest.
“When I heard the first song on Side One, ‘Break On Through (to the Other Side),’ it was the greatest piece of music I had ever heard,” he said in a 2004 interview.
Doors organist Ray Manzarek’s playing inspired him to study the organ, which he played with fellow students at Stetson University in Florida in a group called the Tapioca Ballroom Band. But in 1971 he was fascinated by Fats Waller recordings from the 1920s and 1930s and decided that the piano was his future.
He was mostly self-taught, although for a time he studied with James Casale, a jazz pianist in Miami.
“He taught me the chords, the music theory and the basics,” Winston told the West Virginia-based Charleston Chron in 2005.
Mr Winston, who is survived by a sister, said he was also influenced by the music of two New Orleans pianists, Professor Longhair and James Booker. All his influences merged into the style he called “Rural Folk Piano”. He used this term to describe music that, as he said on his website, is “melodic and uncomplicated in approach, such as B. Folk guitar and folk songs. and has a rural sensibility.”
Critics sometimes found his piano work simple or repetitive, but he sold millions of albums and drew enthusiastic audiences wherever he played. His concerts generally included a charitable component, supporting food banks or other causes.
Mr. Winston knew his music wasn’t for everyone, and he was self-deprecating about it.
“One person’s punk rock is what another person sings ‘Om’ or plays the harp,” he told the Santa Cruz Sentinel of California in 1982. “It’s all valid – everyone has their own path.” I don’t want to sit around and listen to myself all day.”
Jay Gabler summed up Mr. Winston’s appeal and skill on the website Your Classical in 2013.
“Love him or hate him,” he wrote, “George Winston is the kind of artist who shows what fertile ground there is in the vast expanses of musical genres.”