Builders & Designers of Finely Crafted Custom Homes Amber Construction and Design has been designing, building and renovating homes for thirty years. We endeavor to work seamlessly with interior designers and architects to facilitate seamless, expeditious projects in northern Connecticut and the southern Berkshires.
it ' s a rich world. What more do you need? If those sounds and those usages of those instruments satisfy you in that extraordinary music that ' s been written in Europe, then why bother to listen to anything else? For over a half a century, I’ m in a band without a genre. I ' ve got one foot in jazz, but it ' s a bigger world to me than jazz.
David: If you ' re going to put your music in a genre, where would you place it?
Paul: There isn ' t an existing box. World music is not accurate. First of all, in this country, to be world music, you need to be foreign from here. For a number of years, our music was lumped into that. In the mid-’ 80s, it became a genre relating to music for meditation. It was mostly acoustic music, and so people looked around and said,“ Oh, these guys have been playing acoustic instrumental music for 20 years, so they must be the fathers of‘ New Age,’” which we didn ' t feel comfortable with. But
marketing needs boxes, so they try to put stuff in boxes. Up until that time, our music never had any place in record stores. We would sometimes be in the folk bin or the jazz or classical. Then it became New Age. So for a while, our music got put into that, and we were put into that category in Grammy ® voting. But it ' s not a genre that really explains us. I used to respond to that question by saying,“ Well, it ' s simple. It’ s contemporary contrapuntal Connecticut country consort music.” n
On Saturday, November 29, at 7:30 p. m. at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave., New York City, the Paul Winter Consort will present the concert premiere of Paul ' s new album, Horn of Plenty. More information and tickets are at stjohndivine. org.
On Saturday, December 20, at 7 p. m., the Paul Winter Consort returns to Saint James Place, 352 Main St., Great Barrington to celebrate the winter solstice. They will perform traditional winter solstice pieces in the midst of a raft of new compositions. They include“ Tomorrow Is My Dancing Day,”“ Sound Over All Waters,”“ The Well-Tempered Wood Thrush,”“ The Rain Is Over and Gone,”“ Wolf Eyes,” and“ Icarus.” Tickets can be purchased at saintjamesplace. net.
Other performances coming up include The Great Hall in Needham, Massachusetts, on
December 6; Cathedral of St Paul in Burlington, Vermont, on December 13; Woolsey Hall, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 19; and Bombyx Center in Florence, Massachusetts, on December 21.
For more reading on Paul Winter, check out the excellent book, The Musical Work of Paul Winter, by Bob Gluck.
AMBER CONSTRUCTION & DESIGN
Builders & Designers of Finely Crafted Custom Homes Amber Construction and Design has been designing, building and renovating homes for thirty years. We endeavor to work seamlessly with interior designers and architects to facilitate seamless, expeditious projects in northern Connecticut and the southern Berkshires.
81 River Road, Collinsville, CT 06019 Office: 860.693.0040 | Design Inquiries: 860.402.5293 | amberconstruction. net
Holiday 2025 2023 BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE // 43