Windham Hill Records

Windham Hill Records
The Original Windham Hill Logo (1977-1996) designed by Jay Durgan.
Parent company	Sony Music Entertainment
Founded	1976 (1976)
Founder	William Ackerman Anne Robinson
Defunct	2007 (2007)
Status	Inactive
Distributor(s)	Legacy Recordings Valley Entertainment
Genre	Acoustic, new age, folk, ambient
Country of origin	U.S.
Location	Palo Alto, California (1976–1996) Los Angeles, California (1996–2007)

Windham Hill Records was an independent record label that specialized in instrumental acoustic music. It was founded by guitarist William Ackerman and Anne Robinson (née McGilvray) in 1976 and was popular in the 1980s and 1990s.

The label was purchased by BMG through a series of buyouts from 1992 through 1996 and is currently a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment after BMG's subsequent merger in 2008. Private Music, also a subsidiary of BMG, has issued some back-catalog releases under the Windham Hill Records imprint. Since the Sony merger in 2007, Windham Hill has released no new material but reissues albums and compilations as part of Sony's Legacy Recordings brand.

In 1975, William Ackerman was a college dropout who played acoustic guitar on the Stanford University campus. Friends asked him to record his instrumental music for them on cassette. They chipped in so he could make an album, The Search for the Turtle's Navel (later renamed In Search of the Turtle's Navel). He gave copies to radio stations, which attracted an audience as well as California record store owners, and his albums began to sell. He founded the label with his then-girlfriend Anne Robinson in 1976. Ackerman invited like-minded musicians to the label, including Alex De Grassi, his cousin and an acoustic guitarist who became one of Windham Hill's best sellers. Ackerman began recording friends and fellow Bay Area musicians, and Robinson would market and design the albums.

Windham Hill produced music that was difficult to define, with elements of classical, folk, and jazz, nearly all of it instrumental, acoustic, and mellow. California-based Tower Records stores gave Windham Hill its own section.Billboard magazine called the music soft jazz in 1983, but later listed the label as new age. The roster included acoustic guitarists Michael Hedges, David Cullen, John Doan, and Andrew York. The label's albums topped the New Age and Contemporary Jazz charts in Billboard magazine. Albums of solo piano by George Winston crossed over into the Pop and Folk charts. Seven albums by Winston have been certified Gold and Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).