George Winston
Powell Hall
St. Louis MO
1984-09-09

master audience tape > WAV > FLAC
No DAE!
Sound quality: A (re-seeders rating)

George Winston - piano, harmonica, guitar

Disc 1 - Set 1

1. talk
2. Country Night
3. Colors
4. Linus & Lucy
5. January Stars
6. Dog & Cat
7. Haste in Wedding / Crawl to Divorce [harmonica]
8. Part 1 & 3 of an Imaginary Film [harmonica]
9. Moon

Disc 2 - Set 2

1. California-French-Hawaiian Thing [guitar]
2. ?
3. Hummingbird
4. People Get Ready / Jackson, Mississippi, 7:00 AM, Already Too Hot
5. ragtime-type piece [harmonica]
6. Thanksgiving
7. Variations On The Kanon By Johann Pachelbel
8. Hey Now Baby [Professor Longhair]
9. Velveteen Rabbit in the Spring

Total time: 2:05:20

Okay, I know what you're thinking - isn't George Winston that annoying new-age balding barefoot pianist from the Windham Hill label? Why would I want a concert of his? Well, true, that was my reaction at first as well. Here's my story:

I went to see him in St. Louis on a whim and it was an okay concert. To be honest I don't remember hardly any of it, probably due to an overuse of herbal stimulants at the time. I taped it, for whatever reason at the time, and immediately came home and shelved the tape.

So now it's twenty years later and I'm looking through my big box o' tapes to see what I have and I see this George Winston tape. Again, I can't remember a damn thing about the concert so I put it on. I'm absolutely shocked at the sonic clarity of the playing on this tape. The tape itself is in immaculate condition considering it hasn't been played more than once in 20 years.

George is apparently a multi-instrumentalist because he plays not only piano but guitar and harmonica in this show. I certainly don't remember any of this, perhaps I fell asleep, and woke up only to flip the tape. There is quite a diversity of music played here - there is his signature crystal clear piano playing, some sorta slack key guitar, some semi-funky harmonica, stride piano, a classical piece and some other stuff. George has an excellent technique of using space and the resonance of the piano and the hall itself, and is skilled at setting up complex fingering patterns and slowly evolving them creating an almost hypnotic effect.

As I said before, the sound on this tape is extraordinarily clear and sharp. I wasn't using very expensive equipment, I think it was a Sony recording Walkman and small stereo microphone. But the quietness of the hall and the lack of any background noise result in an excellent tape. I had to do some processing to cut down the amplitude of the applause and normalization to get the volume up to a good listening level but it really came out nicely.

This quite possibly could be one of the only audience tapes of George Winston you'll ever see. Check it out, you might be pleasantly surprised, I know I am.
---

Originally seeded on DIME by rlouk on 2005-02-10
Reseeded on DIME by iggy1 on 2023-06-08
- No audio changes made to FLAC files
- rlouc "found a bit of digital weirdness in the original disc 2 track 2" and created a fix for it. That fix has been incorporated into this re-seed.
- Tagged and renamed files
- Created FFPs
- Added information to info file

I am not an expert on George Winston. I like his "December" album and enjoyed this concert. Powell Hall is where the St. Louis Symphony performed, so its acoustics are really good. My favorites from the show are Colors, Linus & Lucy, and Variations on the Kanon. I was not overly thrilled by the harmonica songs although I'm sure that they added variety to the show.

Honestly, it works best as background music for me. I am sure that all real fans of George Winston will love this show!