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Decades before jazz bandleader and composer Paul Winter won seven Grammy Awards and released more than 30 albums of jazz, world and new age music, he was a young man who came to Maine in search of the good life.
Like so many who came before and after him, Winter first came to Maine in 1968 to learn from Helen and Scott Nearing, the pioneering educators and thinkers who advocated for simple living and a radical shift in the way humans relate to the earth. The Nearings’ homestead in Brooksville — now known as The Good Life Center — in those days attracted everyone from anti-Vietnam War protestors to those hoping to learn to farm and go “back to the land.”
At that time, Winter already had a thriving jazz career, helping to popularize Brazilian bossa nova music in the U.S. with his first three solo albums. By 1968, he was searching for new inspiration, and he found it with the Nearings.
“I was completely enthralled by them, and their ethos and what they had to teach us about the world,” said Winter, who now lives in Connecticut. “I came to visit them in Maine every year for the next 15 years. I have always considered Maine to be a kind of oasis. I’ve met so many interesting, creative people there over the years.”
Winter, with his Paul Winter Consort ensemble, will return to Maine this weekend to perform his legendary Winter Solstice Celebration concerts, including on Friday at Hannaford Hall in Portland, Saturday at the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono and Sunday at the Rockport Opera House. For more than 40 years, up until 2020, the concerts were performed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, one of the largest cathedrals in the world.
Among the other creative people in eastern Maine in that era was Winter’s longtime friend and collaborator, Noel Paul Stookey, best known as one-third of legendary folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Stookey, who moved to Blue Hill with his wife, Betty, 50 years ago this year, said that one of the big reasons why he chose to move to Maine was the pull of the Nearings, who attracted many interesting people to the region.
“I think there are two reasons people come here. One is the physical component — it is beautiful, it’s simple, it’s peaceful. ” Stookey said. “And the other is the people. There’s just something about Maine folk. Conversations are usually to the point, caring, instructional, and seldom emotional, until you get to a level of intimacy that calls for it. That’s very appealing.”
Stookey, who produced the Paul Winter Consort’s first two albums in the late 1960s, will join the consort on stage for the Orono concert on Saturday. The Winter Solstice Celebration concerts began in 1980, when the Paul Winter Consort was invited to be artists in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which for years has hosted an array of artists and community outreach organizations.
What was originally intended to be a one-off performance turned into a decades-long residency, with Winter and his ensemble members creating a yearly celebration meant to honor the changing of the seasons, the return of the light and the beauty of the Earth and the creatures that inhabit it. Winter’s music has long fused many different genres, from jazz and classical to an array of world music traditions and even the sounds of animals like wolves and whales.
“It’s a chance for everybody to be together on the biggest common ground there is. We all experience the solstice. We are all on this planet, under the sun,” Winter said. “That kind of thinking — the whole Earth way of thinking — certainly comes out of the era when I was visiting Maine.”
Though the residency at the cathedral ended in 2020 with the pandemic, Winter continues to perform the winter solstice concerts in other concert halls around the country. He said the concerts have taken on new relevance as climate change continues to threaten the environment.
“The only way anything will turn around regarding climate chaos is if more people are able to embrace the entire Earth as their home, and to protect it the way they would their own homes and families,” Winter said. “All the data and sobering statistics won’t do a thing until it enters your heart. And that’s the wonderful thing about music — it awakens the heart.”
Tickets for this weekend’s Paul Winter Consort’s Winter Solstice Celebration concerts in Maine are available at each venue’s website.
