Released by Jeff Oster

Contrary to the accolades from journalists regarding my prescient awareness of a disenfranchised demographic awaiting a new musical movement, the truth is I entered this musical world in complete innocence. Disco ruled the airwaves in 1975 and no one would have given a record label devoted to guitar and piano solos a snowball's chance, myself included.

Windham Hill was born not of an overreaching ambition, but of a modest desire to have a handful of people hear my guitar solos, then those of my cousin Alex deGrassi, and then the piano solos of my friend George Winston. That the label succeeded to the stratospheric degree it did was not a testament to cleverness, but to sincerity. It worked because it was simple and true.

The label evolved over the years to include the work of musicians like Michael Hedges, Liz Story, Shadowfax, Mark Isham and Tuck and Patti among many others. We never left the solo recordings behind, but the music we released was increasingly ensemble and often electric.

It wasn't about a purist preconception; it was about finding music that moved me, whatever its form. As a producer and label founder what you live for is to hear something new, something different, something that brings you to a new place, but continues to speak directly and sincerely to the listener of human emotion. Jeff Oster's music does this. Jeff Oster does this.

In 2003, nearly 30 years after I had started Windham Hill, I received an e-mail from a guy named Jeff Oster. Initially he was just another person dreaming about making a record, but it didn't take long to figure out that he was both serious about this dream and intelligent enough to pull it off. The CD he sent me of some rough mixes of his work not only impressed me musically, but perhaps even more importantly connected with me emotionally.

On the warm summer day we met, we shared some iced tea, sat on the back deck and talked. I heard this impassioned human being who had a long history of loving music and being a musician, often at great sacrifice to all the sacred cows of the materialistic society we live in. I heard a man who had paid his dues in learning about the masters of jazz trumpet, a man who had worked to perfect his playing, a man who had a deep and abiding respect for those who came before him and offered him something to learn and grow by.

Jeff had played jazz, had played in cover bands, had played funk. He just loved music. He said he thought he'd finally found his voice in music. Jeff is nearly 50. He has a good paying day gig. He has a lovely family, wonderful kids, and a wife who approaches sainthood in her support of this man's dreams. He could be sitting at the country club well into his fourth or fifth cocktail talking about how he " coulda been a great musician." That's not Jeff. He didn't give up. He actually has the guts to live his dream. I can't tell you how much I admire that.

Jeff started mining the internet for percussion parts, began assembling rhythm sections in a musical program called "Acid." This is the plaything of teenagers...kids so steeped in computer technology that it's second nature to sample music and create landscapes of sound without playing a note. This, and other programs like it, are the workhorses of the contemporary music scene. What is remarkable is that an almost 50-year-old man was doing this; a man brought up in a completely different musical world. It was startlingly hip.

But Jeff is also a traditionalist and is a perfectionist. The horn.. the sound of the horn, that sound that had inspired and comforted and uplifted Jeff all those years wasn't going to be replaced by any technology. His lungs, his heart, his lips and his soul were going to play the horn. That was and is the synthesis that yielded RELEASED, one of the most remarkable debut recordings I've ever heard.

Will Ackerman

Windham County, Vermont

June 2005

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