About
The Film
From a garage startup to 27 Gold and Platinum Records, A QUIET REVOLUTION explores the genre-bending history of a record label that developed a new sound and musical movement. In a world of accelerating technologies and a relentless frenetic lifestyle, listeners found music that allowed for contemplation, introspection and harmony.
Windham Hill became a genre unto itself and was as much a lifestyle as a music—a soundtrack that would resonate for its fans the same way a Motown song or Beatles tune would resonate for an earlier generation.
Windham Hill was a blend of classical, folk and jazz. Billboard magazine struggled to pigeon-hole the sound, settling on soft jazz, and eventually the label’s albums topped the New Age and Contemporary Jazz charts. Millions of listeners connected to the music and Windham Hill became one of the most successful independent record labels on earth, single handedly creating the market for modern instrumental music.
Half a century later, the Windham Hill sound appears on playlists as a new generation of listeners and musicians embrace the music. The ethos of the music is still relevant as listeners seek peace, tranquility and ways to look inward in a fast-paced, distracted world.
The Message
During the 1980s-90s, the technological revolution, career and family pressures, and the pace of life was ever increasing. Popular music similarity picked up the pace with electronic dance music, disco, grunge, and punk rock. This rhythm-based, adrenaline fueled music was exciting and energetic, but provided little room for the listener to reflect and look inward. Rather than scream and shout its frustration, Windham Hill took a gentler approach dipped in pastoral ambiences and introspective moods.
The music of Windham Hill was the ‘Quiet Revolution’ that provided a sound and ethos to help heal a turbulent and distracted society. The music posited a sound built not on anger, rage and dissonance, but contemplation, introspection and harmony.
What do you have to say? Is it honest? Is it connected to something that will resonate with other people on an emotional level?
- Will Ackerman, Windham Hill founder
It was music that spoke to the soul and the intellect… inviting you in to a private, introspective world, one where sounds were shaped with meticulous care and melodies unfolded like a lotus.
- John Dilberto, National Public Radio producer
In certain songs I like that ring-out. That ring-out is like the sound of the great plains that go on endlessly and you can see all the way to the horizon in eastern Montana.
- George Winston, pianist
Filmmakers
Director
Tal Skloot is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and editor with a credit list of over twenty-five feature-length documentaries that have won multiple Emmy awards and other recognitions. His work is broadcast nationally on PBS and on multiple streaming platforms.
His recent documentary credits include 4 WHEEL BOB, about wheelchair-hiker Bob Coomber and his attempt to cross the Sierra Nevada and FREEWAY PHILHARMONIC, which follows freelance classical musicians struggling to find a permanent orchestra chair. Both films aired nationally on PBS and screened at film festivals in the U.S. and Europe.
Tal has also worked on major narrative feature films and television series released by 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm Ltd., New Line Cinema, Lionsgate and Orion Pictures.
Cinematographer
Derek Knowles is a filmmaker/cinematographer working in creative nonfiction and at the intersection of sensitively cinematic stories and ecological sensibilities. His work has been supported by If/Then Shorts, Kartemquin Films, the Berkeley Film Foundation, and California Humanities, featured as multiple Vimeo Staff picks and on Short of the Week, and has appeared on The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, PBS, Frontline, and Aeon, as well as festivals around the world.
His latest films, featuring his immersive, narrative camerawork, have explored the relationships between humans and the natural world, most recently with Sentinels, a plunge into the world of tree-sitting and direct action environmentalism, which is featured as part of The Los Angeles Times Short Documentary series after screening at Academy Award-qualifying festivals like DOCNYC, Big Sky, and Indy Shorts. Last Days at Paradise High, which premiered on The New Yorker in August 2020 and After the Fire, winner of the Tribeca Film Institute's "If/Then" Shorts Award and featured on Ryot Films, throughout California PBS stations, and at festivals like Cleveland International, Nantucket, and Big Sky, explored the human fallout of massive wildfires in intimate, character-driven studies.
As a cinematographer, Knowles has collaborated with some of the documentary world’s most established outlets and filmmakers, lensing episodes of Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, PBS Frontline, and The New York Times’ Video and Opinion sections, as well as contributing cinematography to Vice’s Planet A and Showtime’s The Circus. In 2022 and 2023, he filmed extensively on a forthcoming series about Burning Man, The Man Will Burn, directed by Jehane Noujaim, and slated to run on HBO, and was the Director of Photography on the Academy Award-shortlisted and POV-released film, Between Earth & Sky, for which his “breathtaking cinematography” was cited by the Festival Jury at Big Sky and which is also currently under Emmy consideration for Outstanding Cinematography.
Most recently, Knowles spent the last nine months serving as the lead cinematographer on Citizen Nation, a four-part political coming-of-age docu-series broadcast nationally on PBS in October 2024.
His most recent film, The Bird Rescue Center, has been opening for a theatrical re-release of the documentary classic, Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, in addition to festival screenings at Mill Valley and elsewhere.
Associate Producer
Asali Echols is a Bay Area filmmaker and film editor, whose work has screened in festivals across the country and worldwide. Her directing credits include the animated documentary The Violin Upstairs (2019) and the award-winning short documentary Lion on the Mat (2021). She's edited award-winning feature documentaries, including 2e: Twice Exceptional (2015), Navajo Math Circles (2016), and High as a Kite (2020). She helped produced the Simons Foundation's 32-part oral history series Science Lives, and edited and produced the You Got to Move short video series about activism in the South.
Donate
As a partner, we’d like to collaborate with you as we release A QUIET REVOLUTION to audiences across the country through our National Outreach Campaign. Our release will reach a broad audience and achieve our mission objectives through the following initiatives:
- Festival & Theatrical Release to build audience and engage national press
- Screenings at concert halls and music venues
- Screenings and Q&As at music festivals
- Digital release commercially through iTunes, Amazon and Netflix
- National television broadcast reaching millions of viewers
Contact
This story means a lot to me. I’ve played fingerstyle guitar my whole life, and like many fans, the ethos of Windham Hill became a deep part of my musical journey.
I would love to work with you to tell the story. Please email me here.
— Tal Skloot, director
