A six-time Grammy Award-winning saxophonist, Paul Winter was a college student in 1961, when his sextet won the Intercollegiate Jazz Festival and was signed by Columbia Records. The next year, the band toured Latin America as cultural ambassadors for the U.S. State Department, playing 160 concerts in 23 countries. They were the first jazz band to perform at the White House.

Hearing the songs of humpback whales for the first time in 1968 further expanded Winter’s concept of a musical community. The Consort’s rich sound textures give Winter’s Earth Music its unique and alluring quality; sounds from the natural world are interwoven with classical and ethnic traditions, then infused with the spontaneous spirit of jazz.

In 1980, the Paul Winter Consort became artists-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Each year’s Winter and Summer Solstice Celebrations and Earth Mass are among the most popular events in New York. “People get a sense of community – a sense of the whole wide community of life, which is one of the best things we could do with our music,” he says.

Paul Winter has performed in over 2,000 major concert halls, as well as Washington’s National Cathedral, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the Grand Canyon, the Negev Desert in Israel and the palace of the Crown Prince of Japan. He has received a Global 500 Award from the United Nations, and the Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award, among others.