Tim Story

The uninitiated have a nasty habit of assuming pop tarts like Yanni, Enya and John Tesh are somehow representative of all New Age artists. But as with most music genres, it has both a mainstream and an underground vein. Award-winning Tim Story definitely belongs to the latter. A self-taught musician, composer and recording engineer from northwest Ohio, he creates impressionistic and often somber ambient work that echoes the genre's now-shrouded roots in first-wave minimalism, Krautrock, progressive electronics and avant-garde classical music. After releasing a handful of albums in the early 1980s, including an excellent debut titled In Another Country, he signed on with Windham Hill (which would become one of New Age music's major players by decade's end). Since the early 1990s, however, Story has released albums on several labels, including Hearts of Space, Narada and Barking Green Records. Though he isn't as productive as some of his peers (more than a few New Age artists are record-producing machines), just about everything he has released is of the highest quality. In 2003, Story released Lunz with Kosmische Musik icon and Cluster alumnus Hans-Joachim Roedelius.