Local Legend Paul Winter Plays for the 4th at Music Mountain

July 4, 7pm | Falls Village, CT

Paul Winter and his Consort play Gordon Hall at Music Mountain on the Fourth of July—a fitting booking, since Winter has lived in Litchfield County for decades and counts the region as home base for Living Music, the independent label he founded in 1982. He's joined by vocalist Theresa Thomason, pianist Henrique Eisenmann, cellist Dave Haughey, bassist Peter Slavov, and drummer Bertram Lehmann.

Winter's career began at Northwestern University, where he led a jazz sextet that won the 1961 Intercollegiate Jazz Festival, judged by Columbia Records producer John Hammond and Dizzy Gillespie. That sextet went on to tour 23 countries across Latin America for the State Department and performed the first jazz concert ever held at the White House, for the Kennedys, in 1962. He founded the Paul Winter Consort in 1967, and the group's landmark 1970 live album "Road"—which the Apollo 15 astronauts carried to the moon in 1971, naming two lunar craters after songs from it—helped lay the groundwork for what later became known as world fusion music.

In 1968, hearing recordings of humpback whale songs changed the direction of Winter's musical life entirely, opening what he calls "the whole symphony of nature" and turning him into an environmental activist. He went on to develop "earth music," improvised compositions that weave the actual recorded voices of whales, wolves, eagles, and elephants into jazz, classical, and world music textures.

Since becoming artist-in-residence at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1980, Winter and the Consort have presented over 100 special events there, including the long-running Winter and Summer Solstice celebrations and the annual ecological "Missa Gaia/Earth Mass." He has won seven Grammy Awards, all in the Best New Age Album category, for albums including "Crestone," "Miho: Journey to the Mountain," and "Celtic Solstice."

The July 4 program, "Our American Journey, in Celebration," builds in festive extras: a pre-concert dinner hosted by the Falls Village Inn runs at 5pm ($50, pre-ordered), and at 5:45pm Music Mountain Artistic Director Oskar Espina Ruiz and historian Anne Liebling lead a historic tour of the Music Mountain campus and its Sears houses for anyone who wants context before the music starts.

Gordon Hall, Music Mountain, 225 Music Mountain Rd., Falls Village, CT. Tickets at musicmountain.org.