New Age music, the contemplative, mostly instrumental style, had its peak in popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s. While there are fewer new recordings in the style being released, many of its artists remain active. And perhaps there might be a revival of interest in the music in these dark and chaotic times. New Age has ranged from the tinkling piano of people like the late George Winston, calming acoustic guitar music of William Ackerman to the more electronic music from the likes of Jean-Michel Jarre, to more ensemble based music with groups like Ancient Future and harpist Andreas Vollenweider. One artist who has been part of the scene from almost the beginning in the early 1980s, is guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Carl Weingarten, who has just released Songs for a Perigee Moon at least his 17^th solo album, and his first in three years. And like much of his past work, there’s a degree of variety to the textures of the music, ranging from the contemplative to more upbeat almost jazz-rock fusion oriented.

Weingarten’s early interest was in photography, and by junior high, he was shooting movies on Super 8 film, winning an a Kodak Teenage Movie Award. But by high school, he became interested in slide style guitar, and sought to create music to go with his films. He released his debut album in 1981, after founding an independent label in St. Louis the previous year. Around that time he formed Delay Tactics, described as in instrumental electronic band, in which he began using electronic techniques like looping on his guitars.

Weingarten moved to the San Francisco area in the 1990s, which was a kind of hotbed for New Age style artists. All along he has been releasing a series of recordings that were staples of the Echoes program on Public Radio.

Weingarten’s new album features contributions from a pair of musicians who themselves have been part of the New Age scene, bassist Michael Manring and keyboard man Kit Walker. The album also has contributions from Bill Ortiz and Jeff Oster on trumpet or flugelhorn on a few tracks, evoking the sound of trumpet man and composer Mark Isham, also a significant figure on the New Age scene. The new album is a combination of some electronics and acoustic sound, with some sequenced percussion and real drums on different tracks and some wordless vocals from Katie Stephen. Weingarten is heard often simultaneously on acoustic and electric guitar, often playing slide-style, adding a hint of blues to the proceedings.

A lot of New Age style music is texture-oriented, without a lot of melodic or harmonic content, and Weingarten’s music can sometimes take that direction, but there are also tracks that are more musically substantial with interesting harmonic and melodic lines, though it’s still not something you are likely to come away humming to yourself.

Opening is one of the album’s stronger tracks, called Ember Nights with lots of interesting sonic content, with an almost danceable beat and nice instrumental textures. Weingarten puts his slide style guitar in the spotlight. <<>>

More toward the New Age side of things is A Late Spring with the wordless vocals of Katy Stephen. Again, the instrumental textures keep it interesting, with Celso Alberti doing a kind of Brazilian percussion line. <<>>

What is essentially the title track, Rise of the Perigee Moon goes all out to the new age side of things with its contemplative sound and minimalist melodic structure. Jeff Oster’s flugelhorn adds a nice touch, evoking the sound of Mark Isham’s music. <<>>

A nice textural piece is a track called A Wolf in Winter with spacey synthesizers, atmospheric slide guitar work by Weingarten and world music percussion influence. <<>>

A track called Silvana also hews toward textural side with a lack of much of any melody, but a nice mixture of Weingarten’s acoustic and electric slide guitar playing, which is mostly improvising. <<>>

Weingarten adds some electronic strings to the piece called Twilight Reminisce though otherwise it just seems like some unstructured improvising on the guitar. <<>>

Probably the weakest track on the album is one called Ennio’s Gold which falls into the new age cliches of repetitive riffs and dependence on the instrumental textures. <<>>

Another of the more sonically interesting pieces is A New Remembering with a nice blend of electronics and acoustic guitar, piano and Ms. Stephen’s wordless vocals. <<>>

Songs for a Perigee Moon, the new release from veteran New Age guitarist and composer Carl Weingarten is a nice mix of the lightweight new age sensibility with a bit more of the substantial musical content of jazz-rock fusion. Its instrumental textures are quite pleasing, and the arrangements show a good sense of variety. One of the album’s pluses is the presence of essentially a band with keyboard man Kit Walker and bassist Michael Manring providing their own contributions to give it more depth.

Our grade for audio quality is close to an “A” with a nice ambience, a clean mix and better than average dynamic range.

It’s always nice to have some laid-back music you can zone out to. Carl Weingarten has been doing this kind of thing for over forty years now, and he has once again succeeded in making an intelligent, pleasing album of instrumental music that embodies some of the sonic qualities of the New Age scene, but without being boring.

(c) Copyright 2025 George D. Graham. All rights reserved.
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<<>> indicates audio excerpt played in produced radio review

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