Paul Winter Consort

We have a bunch of wonderful CD’s from the Paul Winter Consort. Their recordings weave together the music of musicians from many different cultures with music which imitates the sound of whales, wolves and other animals.

Solstice Live!

From Paul Winter Consort’s annual winter solstice concerts held at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City (as broadcast over NPR each December.)

Celtic Solstice

Wondrous collection of Celtic musicians playing with Paul Winter Consort. Draws on the Consort's summer solstice celebrations in St. John the Divine Cathedral.Mainly enchanting, moving, powerful instrumental music. Includes the lovely setting of William Butler Yeats' poem “Golden Apples of the Sun" that Judy Collins recorded many years back. This recording is the stuff of dreams...

Earthbeat

Paul Winter Consort joined by the Russian traditional choir Dimitri Pokrovsky Singers

This milestone collaboration, recorded in Moscow and New York in 1987, was the first album of original music created by Americans & Russians together. The Consort's western harmonies and Afro-Brazilian rhythms floating over the ancient circle songs and village chants revitalized by the dynamic Russian singers make this into an energetic, reverberating layering of sound.

"Paul's fusion of this 1,000-year old Russian ethnic choral tradition with the personal style of his group is a forceful statement of his belief in the oneness of our earth song." - Dave Brubeck

"For centuries, trained composers have tried rearranging fok music. In this ground-breaking album, Paul Winter does something that may set a new path - of juxtaposing and superimposing different idioms. It may raise eyebrows. I think it's great." - Pete Seeger

The Man Who Planted Trees

The Consort and Earth Music Productions bring this powerful eco-fable to life in this special recording with narration by the late Robert J.Lurtsema, former host of one of North American public radio's most popular innovative music programs, WGBH's "Morning Pro Musica". The lyrical and rhythmic music of the Paul Winter Consort reinforces the story's message of hope.

The Man Who Planted Trees is the story of Elzeard Bouffier, a man of great simplicity and determination. Bouffier, having lost his wife and son, retreats to a remote and desolate part of France. "It was his opinion that this land was dying for want of trees". So, alone with his dog and his sheep, he commences his life work - the steadfast planting of one hundred acorns each day.

This story is a chronicle of the enormous contribution that one person can make to the earth. Over the course of thirty years, laboring in peace, without interruption, and in complete anonymity, Bouffier transforms the landscape. Once desiccated, ravaged by relentless winds, and forsaken by people, the region is brought back to life by Bouffier's trees.

"Jean Giono's story of man's generosity to nature - and through nature to other humans - surely belongs among the most moving and endearing statements of our hope. The story - vision and parable and manual - correctly opposes the tree planter, the earth-husband, to the makers of war. In the figure of Elzéard Bouffier, Giono summarizes the best that can be said of our species." -- Wendell Berry