One of the parents of a new style of instrumental pop music called "new age," George Winston is known for his passion for the traditional and the ability to synthesize the elements of very different types of American music into his own style of "rural folk piano." Though some might sneer at his music as "easy listening," many welcome it as a deeply felt musical reminder of a simpler time, when life was led to the primal rhythm of the seasons.

George Winston

As a child growing up in Montana, Mississippi, and Florida, Winston spent hours listening to pop music on the radio. He especially loved the instrumentals and made sure to tune in each hour for the short piece of instrumental music that preceded the news. The bands he heard in those formative pop music years of the 1950s and 1960s, the Ventures...