William Ackerman

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William Ackerman bigraphy, stories - Guitarist, composer

William Ackerman : biography

1949 –

William Ackerman (born 1949)Ruhlmann, William. . allmusic. is an American guitarist and composer of acoustic-based instrumental music. He founded and ran for many years the influential New Age record label Windham Hill Records.

Career

William Ackerman was born in West Germany but was adopted by a couple who lived in Palo Alto, California. A self-professed poet and musician who briefly studied guitar with Robbie Basho, Ackerman grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended the Northfield Mount Hermon School and Stanford University. Before finishing his studies at Stanford, Ackerman dropped out to become a carpenter. Ackerman had composed some pieces of music for a performance of Romeo and Juliet at Stanford. In 1975, without having played a "paying gig" "(a) group of friends and informal fans got together and collected about $300 in five dollar bills to send me into a recording studio. I picked a studio out of the phone book named Mantra Studios (it was the 70s after all!). I walked into that room and made a record I called The Search for the Turtle’s Navel in two afternoons." (William Ackerman, liner notes for Returning, 2005).

Initially William Ackerman kept up his job as a builder but recording music took up more of his time until he was working on music full-time. Ackerman ran his music label Windham Hill Records for years. He did just about everything from picking cover art to producing the records. Early albums featured himself (It Takes a Year) and his cousin, fellow guitarist Alex de Grassi Turning: Turning Back (1978). Although in later years critics would single out Ackerman’s records (especially Childhood and Memory) and De Grassi’s first record, the album that gained Windham Hill Records notice was the 1980 recording by George Winston Autumn. This record was well reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine and, as a result of this national exposure the record began selling in large numbers. For many years it was the best selling album in the Windham Hill Catalog.

Ackerman found that life as a record label executive was, in his own words, "making him crazy." His marriage ended in divorce and he eventually moved out of the Bay Area and across the country back to his old residence near Brattleboro, Vermont in Windham County. In 1992 he sold half of his stake in Windham Hill Records to BMG and stopped recording and producing. Life in Vermont away from the record business proved enjoyable and so Ackerman sold the remainder of his stake in Windham Hill Records in 1996. He currently lives in Brattleboro and produces music from his nearby studio Imaginary Road.

William Ackerman’s musical influences are Erik Satie, John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Leo Kottke. William Ackerman has told an anecdote about his musical debt to John Fahey. One of his early pieces of music sounded a great deal like a Fahey composition titled The Last Steam Engine Train and so he visited Fahey, asked him if he thought the music was too similar, and played him the tune. Fahey said "You can have it!". The tune in question is "The Rediscovery of Big Bug Creek, Arizona", from It Takes a Year.

On guitar tunings, William Ackerman has said that none of his songs use the standard guitar tuning.http://www.williamackerman.com/music/Tunings.html For example, his song "Processional" has the D string tuned up to an E, and the high E string tuned down to a C with a capo on the 5th fret. He also says that only two songs share the same tuning (at least as of 2000). Ackerman’s love of non-standard tunings (coupled with the use of a capo) allows him to play melodies where many of the notes can be played without fretting them allowing the strings to "ring free". He shared his love of non-standard tunings with Michael Hedges.

Since selling his share of Windham Hill, Ackerman has released four new albums, Sound of Wind Driven Rain’ 1998, Hearing Voices 2001 (both were nominated for a Grammy), an album re-working some great signature songs – Returning 2004 (which won a Grammy award), and PURE 2006, again with some previous materials, but with some new work as well.