To talk about William Ackerman is to talk about two things: Windham Hill Records (a classical record label in New Age genre, founded by him) and the guitar, an instrument this american with German blend knows how to awake and care as the whistles blowed by the wind in an afternoon photographed by the moon.
He is, as well, an excellent person as you can discover in this long talk. Thank you, Will!

-Your beginnings had to see nothing with the music since you were a carpenter. Is it true?

-Music had always been a big part of my life, but I never considered it as a way to make a living. My father was the head of the English Department at Stanford University and my mother had been head of the English Department at Radcliffe so it was always assumed by everyone, myself included, that I would become a professor.Having grown up surrounded by academia, I realized very near the end of my college education that if I simply kept going in the same direction I would end up as a professor and I wanted to see more of life than what I'd known as a child.
About the most radical change I could think of was to become a carpenter and so I left Stanford without graduating and never looked back.
I began my carpentry with a Norwegian boat builder turned ship's carpenter for the Norwegian Merchant Marine... A man who eventually became a general contractor in California. Because he was a boat builder used to curves and complex uses of wood, simple home building was child's play to him. I was very lucky and honored to apprentice with him. His name was Osmund Hansen.

-Besides being a composer you are a guitarist. Why this instrument and not another one?

-It probably began to impress girls... Which is why adolescent boys do about 99% of what they do.

-The Spanish guitar is the most famous of the world. Do you know some Spanish guitarist? Do you know Paco De Lucía?

-Of course I know Paco. My own listening is extremely broad... Far broader than the catalogue of Windham Hill. Our audience actually limited the scope of what we did with Windham Hill.
In Windham Hill there were early tries at selling Blues and Country music, but we were rewarded most for the instrumental music we were making so we stuck with that. Later we created High Street Records for singer/songwriters which was very successful as well.
I'm a big Björk fan... I love the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and, of course, I've at least listened to every guitar style on the planet. While I love listening to the classical guitar (and lute) I always loved the american folk element of the steel string guitar.

-In 1976 you founded the famous record label Windham Hill. Speak to us about it.

-I'm literally writing a book, Manuel, and this question sounds like about six chapters of it, but I will say that the label was begun only to sell 300 copies of vanity pressing of my solos I did for friends. I assumed I'd have 147 of these in my closet for the rest of my life, but 300 was the minimum order the record pressing plant would take. Whatever Windham Hill was or became happened not because of business ambition, but because of the love of the music. It was an innocent experiment which worked miraculously.

-With this label you achieved that the musical New Age was coming to the whole people with facility. How do you see nowadays this style of music?

-I've always hated the term "New Age". There are a number of good reasons for this which I will detail if you wish, though it's not a quick or simple explanation. The Los Angeles Times quoted me in 1987 when I said "if I catch the guy who coined the term I'll nail his forehead to the wall...", a decidedly un-New Age sentiment.

-Why did Windham Hill end up by belonging to BMG?

-I'm not sure I understand the question, but I'll take a guess at the meaning... Windham Hill began as a cottage industry which is when I liked it best. Ultimately it became a huge corporation with nearly 100 people working for it in a number of different nations. I simply didn't enjoy running a corporation and it was taking a toll on my personally.

-Talking about writing, poetry is the most beautiful text. Talking about the things we hear in general, is music the most beautiful thing we could hear?

-I'm not quite sure how to answer this honestly... Music, yes, but the sounds of your lover when making love is right up there too. The wood thrush (a bird) that comes in the spring and leaves with the full moon in August is something that brings me a pleasure that is almost unexplainable. I love the sound of wind... Some of my memories of being in the Sierra Nevada and having the wind move through the Sugar Pines is as powerful as any memory of that lovely place that meant so much to me. Being a young surfer in Santa Cruz CA and coming to the seashore in a heavy fog and hearing the surf crashing and being met with equal feelings of fear and excitement is a magic memory of sound. My girlfriend of ten years, Susan, and I call each other with little cat sounds... Without that sound my life would be so much poorer. I could go on forever... I guess music is only one of the precious sounds for me.
Oh, and last winter we were in Mexico and came to a place where they were sifting rocks out of the ground... A backhoe (tractor) would dig dirt out of the earth and drive it to the top of the hill where it would be dumped into a chute... This would be run through a series of screens so that the sand would first be separated, the gravel next, the small rocks next, the larger rocks next and the boulders last... All these ran down metal chutes and made an insanely loud noise and I just loved it and sat there for an hour being overwhelmed by the power of the sound...

-You are of German origin but you live in California. What has this state that is where they live almost all the New Age's musicians?

-I am not of German origin except genetically... I was born in Palo Alto, California, but live in Windham County, Vermont, which is light years away from the culture of California.

-You have played the guitar in cathedrals, caves... How the scenary helps you when you are playing?

-When I write it is in an alpha state and it makes no difference where I am. For performance, I am thrilled with the big concerts like those at Red Rocks or the Montreux Jazz Festival, and then there are those concerts that mean everything to you from a career standpoint like playing Carnegie Hall, but these days I'm enjoying my house concerts more than anything... Playing for 30 people in a living room without a sound system; a return to how it felt to play music for friends in college.

-What did suppose the entry of the pianist George Winston in the label?

-By the time Windham Hill released George Winston's 'Autumn' we were already nearly 5 years old as a company and had grown by 1000% (that's not a mistake) year to year since our beginning. We had national distribution and a record deal in Germany. We were getting a lot of radio airplay and playing reasonably large shows already with myself and Alex de Grassi, but it was the review in Rolling Stone of Winston's 'Autumn' that brought the label to a widespread audience in the US. This was also our first gold record which brought us to the attention of A&M Records which enabled the label to grow enormously in the US and in Japan especially. George Winston was the cornerstone of Windham Hill, but it was the catalogue of musicians that made Windham Hill so great and together we were stronger as Windham Hill than as individual artists.

-What other musicians would you stand out of Windham Hill?

-I didn't sign anyone who didn't move me emotionally and there was never an artist on Windham Hill who I didn't both like and admire.
I think that Michael Hedges will probably be regarded as the greatest innovator of the guitar in the 20th century when the book is written a couple of hundred years from now. I think Alex de Grassi's compositions are staggering. I think Phil Aaberg may be the most talented musician of any sort I have ever met. I think Liz Story is a gift from the universe. There are so many I don't know where to begin, but I suppose my closest connections are from the early days of the company when innocence still surrounded us.

-You have played live in Spain. What do you remember of these performances?

-I had only a couple of performances in Madrid (and, yes, please bring me over for some more concerts!)...
What I remember is a very enthusiastic crowd who were very generous emotionally. I remember that you people stay up a lot later at night than I do!

-As an artist you have published many albums and have taken to you many prizes (included the Grammy). How do you remember your first records?

-Innocent, sincere, not compromised by any thoughts of commerce or money. 'Turtle's Navel' and even 'It Takes a Year' sound good to me, but kind of square and hurried... This is why I recorded 'Returning', to take the compositions that I thought were worthy and express them from the perspective of an older man who actually somehow feels them more deeply now, appreciating what gifts they were to be given to me.

-Your last recording was in 2004 ('Returning'). Why these years of silence?

-'Returning' actually wasn't in a time vacuum. Probably the biggest silence was before 'The Sound of Wind Driven Rain'... I think it was six years between records when that came out. This was after the sale of Windham Hill and my de-tox from corporate commerce. It took awhile to find the love and innocence again.
'The Sound of Wind Driven Rain' was ambitious because I wanted to create a record as melodically self-sufficient as my early recordings... Not let myself get lazy by allowing another instrument to create the melody over my guitar chords, but force myself to dig in and provide all the melody myself. Once I had accomplished that and got a Grammy nomination from it, I did 'Hearing Voices' which was an experimental piece with voices as my accompanists... Voices which didn't sing in English so that the human voice could be heard, but it was heard to the English speaking world as the voice communicating emotion, not words or concepts.

-As a producer you are working with musicians like Jeff Oster, Karen Garrett, Dana Cunningham... What can you tell us about these musicians?

-Jeff Oster is going to be a huge presence in the musical world. The new recording we're just finishing is monumental. Keith Carlock from Sting and Steeley Dan plays drums on the tracks and T Bone Wolk plays bass. Some pieces have over 140 tracks... This is huge stuff with Jeff's layered trumpet and Fluglehorn as the centerpiece.
Karen Garret's new CD 'It's about the Rose' is now in it's third month as the #1 record at NAR. You can hire someone to help you get to #1, but to hold onto that spot for 3 months means that the people are responding to the music... This is not marketing, but simply people loving what she does. Karen is clear emotionally and expresses herself without reservation. I've watched her grow incredibly in the few years I've known her and her music is touching people on a very deep emotional level.
Dana Cunningham is probably the most impressive and versatile pianist I've worked with for many years. Her compositions range from breathtaking improvisations to hymns of her creation. Listening to Dana is like seeing a lot of different landscapes, all of which dazzle you, but they are clearly landscapes in the same country... Her musical landscapes all sound only like her.
There will be a guitar record coming out soon from Rudy Perrone who has made a guitar recording which is unique... After all the millions of guitar records to be recorded it is incredible that someone can still offer something so distinctive and rich. Rudy plays a lot of different guitars including almost toy-like 3 stringed instruments... He can make magic with anything that has a sting on it.
I might also mention the recording of a 16 year old pianist Ryan Brown. Ryan is part of a movement I'm seeing toward a return to acoustic music. The music industry is falling apart and, doing the exact opposite of what they need to do to stay viable and growing, they've become increasingly conservative and narrow... Which explains who Rap could be moving into its third decade as the dominant musical form. Kids are sick of the narrow range of music offered them and are returning to acoustic music for many of the same reasons that people embraced Windham Hill in a time when Disco ruled the airwaves. Ryan is still a simple player... The piano playing itself is simple, uncomplicated, but the kid has an incredible innate sense of melody which is emotionally deep. I think he is one of those who will take acoustic music into the future.

-How do you see the health of this planet?

-Dire. I consider humanity to be a biological catastrophe on a scale with the asteroids that slammed into the Yucatan and Australia (over hundred of millions of years) causing both widespread decimation of species, but also corresponding genetic changes that changed the shape of the world's life. I'm sure the world will shrug off the poisons we're pouring into the biosphere and that the world will abide and prosper again, but in the short term our influence is cancerous.
If you haven't seen 'An Inconvenient Truth', you must. I didn't think I needed to see it because I was familiar with the concept of Global Warming and that I didn't need convincing. The film is so powerful, though, that it can't help but galvanize you to work toward improving the situation in whatever way you can. There's almost a glimmer of hope in it.

-It has been a pleasure to have chatted with you.

-Thanks, Manuel.

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Vermont, 2007 April 27