Winter Solstice concert reunites Windham Hill musicians at Green Music Center

In the 1980s, when the Windham Hill record label was becoming well-known for acoustic instrumental music, founder Will Ackerman would spend hours punching holes in the covers of promotional LPs for radio stations.

“After an hour I couldn't move my hand,” Ackerman said in a phone interview from his home in Vermont. “So I thought, why don't I put together a collection of all these different people and I would only have to punch one hole.”

He created samplers with a dozen Windham Hill artists - musicians such as George Winston, Liz Story, Alex de Grassi and Barbara Higbie - on one record for radio promotion.

A distributor suggested these collections could be saleable. Ackerman agreed and they were successful from the outset, going gold or platinum.

Soon Windham Hill began organizing the samplers around seasons, and “A Winter's Solstice” was born.

Ackerman said the goal with the original winter collection and its sequels has been to create a seasonally appropriate record while “not trotting out the warhorses of Christmas.”

Windham Hill sought to create a “sacred beautiful tradition in people's lives,” he said, “a musical metaphor for the time, for the season, and that worked incredibly well.”

Ackerman will be joining Barbara Higbie and Alex de Grassi, both early Windham Hill contributors, for the Winter Solstice show Friday, Dec. 15, at Sonoma State's Green Music Center.

Joined by Todd Boston and Ellen Sanders, the musicians also play Dec. 16 at Berkeley's Freight and Salvage.

The driving force for these concerts has been Higbie, a pianist and vocalist who said that the evening will start with a couple of group pieces. Then Ackerman, Higbie and de Grassi will each perform a solo set followed by more collaborations.

“We just mix it up and try to keep the energy moving,” Higbie said.

When the album came out, some people got “really mad” that it wasn't called a Christmas record, but the musicians wanted to keep it “ecumenical.”

There's an Israeli song, some traditional holiday favorites and a healthy helping of Windham Hill classics, she said.

The intent was “to bring all people together from all the different traditions,” she said. “At the time, that was groundbreaking.”

De Grassi, who lives in Redwood Valley near Ukiah, is known for his virtuosity on guitar and said he's excited to play at Green Music Center for the first time.

“There's some magic that happens when you play in an amazing acoustic space,” he said.

He's also looking forward to sharing the stage with Ackerman, who is his first cousin. They grew up in Palo Alto together and worked as carpenters before becoming successful musicians.

“I think it takes us both back to those days when we spent a lot of time together,” de Grassi said. “It's always fun, good camaraderie, good jokes, a good time.”

During the October fires, de Grassi and his wife had to evacuate for five days, but their home survived.

“We took nine guitars,” he said, “nine of my favorite guitars,” along with laptops, family photos and “grandma's diamond ring.”

He and Higbie said that in the wake of the fires, the Windham Hill show is a chance for people to come together and support one another.

The peaceful yet joyful music, Higbie said, evokes complex feelings.

“When you need to be able to move through emotions, music is the thing that can help you reach those emotions in a beautiful way,” she said.

“It's a hugely healing thing. If you think of the price of a ticket compared to a therapy session, it's cheap, really cheap.”

Decades after the label's heyday, Ackerman, who moved from Mill Valley to Vermont in the early 1990s, cherishes the reunions with early collaborators.

“Barbara and I just hug each other,” he said. “These dear friends are still doing what they love to do and arguably doing it better than they ever did. It's a good feeling all the way around.”

The first breakthrough for Windham Hill was pianist George Winston's “Autumn” album, released in 1980.

Ackerman recalled that one night in the late 1970s when he was crashing in a sleeping bag on Winston's couch, he heard Winston play piano music that was unfamiliar.

In the morning he asked Winston what he was playing and the pianist said original compositions.

Winston had played slide guitar and wanted his Windham Hill debut to be a guitar album, but Ackerman said, “Let's do the piano stuff, man.”

Winston reluctantly agreed. The “Autumn” record was a resounding success and eventually went gold, putting Windham Hill on the map.

“Commerce came to us because we did something different and did it really, really well,” Ackerman said. He still get emails from people saying how much Windham Hill's music means to them.

“It works because it was all completely sincere,” he said. “My heart was involved in every note, Barbara Higbie's was, Alex de Grassi's was, George Winston, Liz Story, Shadowfax, every one of us.”

When deciding what to produce, Ackerman would ask himself: “Do I believe this or not? Am I feeling the heart in this? Is it real?” he said. “We were and are about heart.”

Michael Shapiro is author of “A Sense of Place.” He writes about travel and entertainment for national magazines and The Press Democrat.