Paul Winter

From the liner notes of "Canyon" by Paul Winter:

I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time in the spring of 1963. I sat on the edge of the South Rim and played my soprano sax, and as the sound disappeared in to the vastness, I imagined there must be spaces with wondrous echoes somewhere in the depths below me. But in those days I had no thought of making music in the wilderness.

Ten years later I returned, as another concert tour took me through the Southwest. This time I hiked parkway down Bright Angel Trail, and with my sax found some of those echoes. Watching the mule trains go by, I imagined our Consort musicians riding down with cello and drums and guitars strapped to the backs of the mules, playing music in great reverberant spaces and making a CANYON album. This seed grew in me over the next seven years, and in 1980 I came back with the Consort, our instruments, and friends. We went into the canyon not on mules but on rafts, for I had learned by then that the most intimate way to see the Grand Canyon is from the Colorado River.

When we began that first recording and rafting expedition, I had the naive idea that we would come out of the trip with an album. Two weeks and 279 river miles later, humbled by the Grand Canyon, I felt I had barely touched the challenge of translating the spirit of the canyon into sound.

Now, after five years and three more river expeditions, after living in the Canyon for many weeks and recording enough music for an epic, I still feel we have only scratched the surface. From these efforts we offer this short poem - finally, the first album of our CANYON music.

The following pieces are available in two formats.  28.8k is designed for best play on home modems.  56k is designed to be played best with ISDN or faster connections.  Enjoy.