People Magazine

December 1, 1986

 

 

PICKS & PANS

 

Tube

BY JEFF JARVIS

 

A WINDHAM HILL EVENING

PBS   (Wed Nov 26, 10 p.m. ET)

 

If you’ve heard George Winston’s piano music – if you’ve ever eaten in a place where they serve goat cheese, you no doubt have – then you know what the music on the Windham Hill record label is like.  “A sound so new that critics and musicians together cannot agree what to call it,” says the announcer opening this concert at Virginia’s Wolf Trap.  I know what to call it: easy listening (and that’s the first time I’ve ever used that phrase as a compliment, not an insult).  Unfortunately, Winston, Windham Hill’s most famous son, does not play in this concert, but colleagues with a similar sound do: Will Ackerman and Michael Hedges on guitars and the group Shadowfax fill an immensely pleasant hour of lovely, lilting, imaginative music good enough to listen to not just eat to.  Grade: A