Born on this day ...

[Ruby]

William Ackerman was born on this day in 1949, in Palo Alto, California. He is a composer and guitarist with around fifteen albums to his credit and was the co-founder of Windham Hill Records (along with his then girlfriend, Anne Robinson), an independent label specializing in acoustic instrumental music. This seems to have been something that happened to him purely as a result of his passion for what he was doing, and was not planned at all; it began with a group of friends clubbing together to finance him and persuading him to put an album together, and therein lies a universal truth which is played out time and time again.

He does not like the ‘new age’ moniker and has been known to threaten physical assault on those who suggest that that is what he does – in jest, I suspect, especially since he won a Grammy in that category for his Returning: Pieces for Guitar 1970 – 2004, although I am inclined to agree with him to some degree; just because something is gentle, acoustic and melodic, it shouldn’t necessarily be defined as ‘new-age’! Don’t we just love labels?!! Can’t understand things otherwise.

He was responsible for discovering Michael Hedges and himself adopts very similar timings in his own work. I know, that when I find something with the Windham Hill label, it’s probably going to be worth listening to. Look out for it, anyone who might be interested – it’s quite distinctive. The label was bought out by Sony Music Entertainment in the early 90s and now falls under their Legacy Recordings sector, no new music being released.



Will, as he is known, is still producing music, now as the proprietor of Imaginary Road Studios, all of which seems to be going along swimmingly.

Here’s “Lago de Montañas (Mountain Lake)” from his now out of print album Conferring With The Moon chosen from that album because I like it, and because La Luna is so very prevalent right now …

[video=youtube;qapIOptxV_E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qapIOptxV_E[/video]