WINDHAM HILL

Life at his own tempo

Pianist George Winston's many interests
have inspired a varied, fulfilling career

---

By Tim Ryan
tryan@starbulletin.com

I can't see George Winston, but I can hear him doing several things while answering my questions with surprising thoroughness in this telephone interview to his Santa Cruz home.

He recalls an interview we had some 20 years ago in San Luis Obispo, Calif., when he asked me not to squeeze his hand too hard when I shook it.

Then he asks, "Still surfing? I wish I had done it once, but I was the only Montana kid who couldn't skate."

Papers rustle, water is turned on and off, computer keys click-clack.

"Ya know, I had some hair back when we first talked" he says. "I'm 53 but the top of my head is hundred and six."

Vintage Winston. We're supposed to be talking about his Sunday concert at the Hawaii Theatre, and his upcoming album of Doors' tunes, "The Night Divides the Day: The Music of the Doors," but the man likes to let conversations wander.

"I couldn't care less about losing my hair," he says. "Stopped shaving because it was a waste of time. You won't get hanged for having a beard anymore."

"OK, what about your music?" I interrupt.

WIINDHAM HILL Musician George Winston says marriage doesn't quite agree with him and he's still trying to learn how to budget his time.

"I'm just a person who likes to play songs," Winston says, sounding like he's sucking on a peach.

That's like saying Picasso was a guy who just liked to sketch. When most people think about the natural beauty of Montana, they focus on the west, where the Rocky Mountains and the pines carve a dramatic landscape. But Winston's childhood in the eastern region of that state exposed him to the more subtle natural beauty of the Great Plains.

His lifelong appreciation for this has been the inspiration for several albums from "Autumn" to his latest solo piano recording, "Plains." The solo piano recordings since 1980 have focused on the Montana seasons. But he was living in Los Angeles when he wrote the first "Autumn."

"I was reminiscing about Montana, about the fall there because, of course, there really isn't a fall in L.A.," Winston said. "Growing up in Montana every season is so distinctive from one another; it's like four different planets."

His 1994 solo piano album 'Forest" originally was conceived as an album called "Forest and Plains" contrasting the two regions, before he realizing he wanted to give each its own full recording.

" 'Plains' especially draws on my childhood memories of Montana as well as some present feelings," he said. "Even on my earlier albums with the season themes the plains have been a deep inspiration for everything I've done."

George Winston Where: Hawaii Theatre When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday Tickets: $17.50 to $35 Call: 528-0506

So the Doors album seems more than a bit of a departure.

"It's a step out of the ordinary as far as recording but not playing," he says. "It was the Doors' music that got me playing organ and electric piano in the '60s after high school."

The Doors were also "the" inspiration for the "Autumn" albums.

"I was going to do three albums of dance music but the Doors project just moved in front and I went with it," said Winston, who conferred with former Doors Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger. "It needed to be done and was the hardest work I've ever done."

The album contains Winston's 11-minute interpretation of the seminal rock songs "Light My Fire" and "Crystal Ship."

"I knew the album was going to be difficult because I was going to find stuff I had never found before and it would be like becoming a new person," he said.

In 1971, Winston switched to acoustic piano after hearing records by the swing pianists Thomas "Fats" Waller and the late Teddy Wilson. He also started work on his own style of instrumental music on solo piano, playing original songs and arrangements of pieces by other composers.

Winston's melodic impressionistic style comprises much of his recorded output. He chooses to record albums with specific themes and it is this genre, a cross between the range of traditional American folk music and the instrumental pop/R&B that he grew up with, that he calls rural folk piano.

"I invented that for me," says the unmarried musician who doesn't believe in vacations.

"I'm still trying to learn how to budget time to do more music," he said. "I can't image going someplace for a week and not working."

Being single also has its advantages. "I like being by myself. Marriage is not a custom that personally fits me, but I think it's sweet when other people do it."

So while he'll be in Hawaii for more than a week, it doesn't mean Winston he'll be lounging on a beach unless one of his slack-key musicians is performing.

Winston has been a champion of the instrument since he began recording Hawaiian slack-key guitar masters in 1985. His Dancing Cat label's Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters Series now includes 32 releases, with about 38 more to come.

The artists being recorded include Keola Beamer, the late Sonny Chillingworth, Cindy Combs, Led Kaapana, George Kahumoku, Moses Kahumoku, Dennis Kamakahi, Ray Kane, Pat Cockett, Ozzie Kotani, George Kuo, Leonard Kwan, Bla Pahinui, Cyril Pahinui and the late Gabby Pahinui. In his solo piano concerts, Winston also includes some slack-key guitar pieces.

"I knew that something very deep was missing in my life," he said. "When I heard the great slack-key guitarists in 1974, I knew instantly that's what I was looking for. Even though this music comes from Hawaii, it brings me feelings of Montana, since that's my roots."

Click for online
calendars and events.