George Winston (1949), who lived in Michigan, Montana, Mississippi, Florida (where he went to university until 1970), and finally California (settling down in Santa Cruz in 1971), learned to play the electric organ in 1967, inspired by the Doors, and the piano in 1971, inspired by Fats Waller. John Fahey released his Piano Solos (November 1972 - Takoma, 1972), later reissued as Ballads And Blues (Windham Hill, 1981). Winston established himself through the trilogy of Autumn (June 1980), Winter into Spring (March 1982), and December (October 1982) as the most characteristic solo pianist of new age music.

The compositions on those albums were long sentimental excursions structured according to the well-known and heavily exploited form of the melodic fantasy, with the ambition of describing the moods inspired by observing manifestations of Nature. Calm and composed, easy and anonymous, romantic and tinged with jazz, those suites eliminated any aesthetic value, assigning music the role of mere background. Arranged moreover for a single instrument, the piano, they replaced compositional complexity (the goal pursued by traditional avant-garde music) with ease of listening, overturning all the principles of progressive art.

It is no coincidence that Winston would eventually arrive at an album of classical reinterpretations, in which he offers the most famous melodies while reducing their harmonies to cocktail-lounge levels.

The best of his repertoire can be found on Autumn. The development of Colors is almost in contradiction with its title, because it merely suggests its "colors," seeming to deny them continuously even as it evokes them. Longing, which should be a romantic serenade for broken hearts, instead ends up sounding like a postmodern exercise in the "deconstruction" of a stereotype, so that in the end the listener possesses all the syntactic elements of the emotion of longing, but not the emotion itself. That Winston's art does in fact employ even learned techniques is demonstrated by Moon, which absorbs elements of ragtime and jazz, and by Woods and Stars, which are tinged with minimalism. But the core of his art remains popular tradition, the vast ocean of American folk music.

Winston's goal is a mixture of evoking moods and creating new ones: ultimately, Winston's piano style created precisely this "paradigm" of music that transforms one emotional state by referring to other, ideal emotional states.

Winter into Spring already presents a harder and more tormented style, ranging from the lively romance of Raindance to the conceptual sonata of February Sea, with a moment of joyful relaxation in Venice.

These are pieces in which Winston skillfully blends the swing piano style of the 1930s, the New Orleans blues piano tradition of the 1950s, the minimalist piano language of the 1970s, and the entire folk tradition.

Much more banal and sentimental is December, devoted to fireside Christmas carols such as Thanksgiving. Summer is equally lightweight.

Winston is responsible for one of the most questionable aspects of new age music: the endless recycling of banalities under the pretext of relaxation and meditation. Yet his work achieved a historic fusion between the various genres (popular and classical) that make use of the piano. If the idea was taken wholesale from Keith Jarrett, Winston's style is far more modest: it owes little to the jazz tradition and instead draws something from the blues and folk traditions.

Forest (Windham Hill, 1994) and Plains (Windham Hill, 1999) opened a new trilogy, devoted to landscapes.

Linus And Lucy (Windham Hill, 1996) is a tribute to pianist Vince Guaraldi, and Night Divides The Day (RCA, 2002) is a tribute to the Doors.

Winston died in 2023 at the age of 73.