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Scott Cossu's latest Windham Hill production, Switchback, brings an interesting combination of Latin beat and classical instruments to a fusion style that many recent composers use all too often to create background music rather than an intense listening experience...
...Windham Hill Recordings...
Sounds and images once considered experimental are now becoming commonplace. Knockoffs of Glass's trademark repeating chords and arpeggios pop up in television commercials, movie scores and the New Age sounds of Windham Hill. Tharp's sinuous, explosive movements have been danced by Mikhail Baryshnikov. Free-form surrealism is the mainstay of the rock videos on MTV, and their most innovative directors, like Russell Mulcahy, have graduated to feature films. Probably not in the past half-century have the works of the avant-garde achieved such wide currency among mainstream audiences...
Though no firm figures are available, it is estimated that New Age music today accounts for up to 2% of record and tape sales. The percentage may seem small, but it compares favorably with that garnered by classical music. Windham Hill, the West Coast label that has become synonymous with the new style, last year grossed $25 million. In a hard-driving business, Windham Hill's success is anomalous, for the label is rarely heard on the radio, and it advertises only occasionally. Instead, it relies on word of mouth among its target audience of young white professionals. It must...
Last year a challenge to Windham Hill's hegemony sprang up with Private Music, a label founded by Peter Baumann, former keyboard player of the rock group Tangerine Dream. Two of Private Music's early releases are among the best New Age albums so far: Rock Violinist Jerry Goodman's high-flying On the Future of Aviation and the anthology Piano One, which features hypnotic solo performances by Jobson and Japan's Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others. "I like to ; describe the music as very visual," says the Berlin-born Baumann. "One important aspect is the absence of lyrics, which gives...