[Cover photo credit to Matthew Muise]
Seven-time Grammy award-winner Paul Winter’s new album, Horn of Plenty, will be released on November 21, 2025, just in time for Thanksgiving. Showcasing the soprano sax of Paul Winter with the Paul Winter Consort, the album features special guests from Brazil, Russia, Ireland, Romania, and Armenia, along with the voices of dolphin, wood thrush, blue whale, and timber wolf.
The Paul Winter Consort will present the concert premiere of Horn of Plenty in their first-ever Thanksgiving celebration at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave., NYC, at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 29, 2025.
The genesis of Horn of Plenty was a request from NPR to create a new radio hour celebrating Thanksgiving. The traditional symbol of Thanksgiving, the cornucopia, gave Winter his theme: the “horn of plenty,” which “symbolizes the abundance of life.” When the “Horn of Plenty” program aired on NPR on Thanksgiving Day 2024, Winter was inspired to expand the musical repertoire of the program into an album by the same title. Winter has always thought of his instrument, the soprano sax, as a “horn.”
He says:
I actually aspire to produce a voice on saxophone that is similar to that of a French horn. I feel a deep sense of gratitude to my horn for how it has been for me a kind of ‘magic carpet,’ carrying me to a lifetime of adventures in many places around the world. This album was a rare opportunity to put forth pieces that feature my playing in consort with longtime musical colleagues, along with the voices of several special guests, both two-legged and otherwise. Horn of Plenty presents my horn in a diversity of settings, in celebration of the cornucopia of creatures and cultures of our glorious Earth.
Horn of Plenty is dedicated to Winter’s longtime friend and mentor Roger Payne (1936 – 2023), who brought to the world the songs of the humpback whales. Payne, in one of his last interviews, declared that if, in our listening, “we fall in love with whales, then we fall in love with nature and fall in love with the whole world.” The Consort presents here a new composition, in tribute to Payne, titled “Song to Roger.”
Other highlights include “Harvest Faire,” inspired by Paul Winter’s years of listening to Bulgarian music and love of the rhythms of Balkan cultures. “Primavera (Spring)” traces its origins to Paul Winter’s Jazz sextet’s 1962 tour of Latin America, when Winter met the song’s composer, Carlos Lyra. Many years later, Winter was blessed to have the opportunity to record “Primavera” with the great Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves.
Three pieces on Horn of Plenty include voices from what Winter calls “the greater symphony of the Earth,” saluting the three realms of ocean (Dolphin), air (Wood Thrush), and land (Wolf). Also showcased are reinterpretations of several songs from Winter’s career, including Ralph Towner’s composition, “Icarus,” which has been the Consort’s theme song for over fifty years.
