Biography
Paul Winter attended Altoona Area High School and graduated in 1957. In 1961, while he was in college at Northwestern University, the band that he founded, the Paul Winter Sextet, won the Intercollegiate Jazz Festival and was signed by Columbia Records.
The next year, the band toured Latin America as cultural ambassadors for the United States State Department, playing 160 concerts in 23 countries. The Sextet was also the first jazz band to perform at the White House.
Winter returned to Brazil in the mid-1960s and his interest in Brazilian music and the emerging bossa nova led to the 1965 release of the album Rio, with liner notes by Vinicius de Moraes.
In 1975, Paul Winter sailed aboard the Greenpeace V anti-whaling expedition for three days of playing saxophone to wild gray whales off the coast of Vancouver Island (Tofino). He was accompanied in this effort by Melville Gregory and Will Jackson, musicians attempting to "communicate" with the whales using various instruments and a Serge synthesizer. Photos of Winter and the whales appeared on wire services and in media around the world, helping the ultimate success of the mission against Soviet whalers.
After Winter's band changed its name to the Paul Winter Consort in the late 1960s, it contributed to the development of world music and space music. The Consort's 1972 release, Icarus, was produced by George Martin. Most of the musicians who worked on this album went on to form the jazz group Oregon. The Consort has continued over the years with different musicians.
Winter was awarded the Courage of Conscience Award for creating music that celebrates the sacredness of life and for his support of the arts. The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Recipients List
Currently, Paul Winter is working on two new albums: One album will be a compilation of material from his original group, the Paul Winter Sextet, titled Early Winter. The other is an album of new music, featuring the Paul Winter Consort, the Great Rift Valley Orchestra, and the calls of the birds that migrate from Africa to Eurasia. The new project will be titled Flyways, and will be a musical journey through the cultures that the birds fly over. Both projects will be released in 2011.
Winter is married and has two children.
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