The Musical World of Paul Winter

Saxophonist and environmentalist Paul Winter has traveled a fascinating path, from a small central Pennsylvania railroad town to touring South America at the invitation of the U.S. State Department and playing at the Kennedy White House. He played in Russia, recorded in the Grand Canyon, discovered the music of Brazil, organized a town party for Charles Ives' birthday. For his group, he adopted an Elizabethan English musical model known as the "Consort," a group of collaborative, talented, and expressive musicians who experimented with diverse musical forms. Bringing wolves, whales, and elephants into his compositions, he is a pioneer of interspecies jazz and musical ecology. This is the first book on his life and work. Bob Gluck is the author of You'll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band (2012), The Miles Davis 'Lost' Quintet and Other Revolutionary Ensembles (2016), and Pat Metheny, Stories beyond Words (2024). He is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University at Albany in Albany, New York.

For millions of listeners world-wide, Paul Winter's music provides the wholeness that comes as we recognize our place in the vastness of the world. In The Musical World of Paul Winter, author Bob Gluck has done his homework. The biographical resonance is further burnished by extensive quotes from Winter's gifted colleagues articulating the guiding aesthetic that has, for sixty-five years and counting, radiated throughout his musical collaborations. And this book goes beyond one musician's story directly into your own. It gets you to musing, "Where do I really fit in? Where does anyone?"

• W. A. Mathieu