George Wallace: Portrait of a Creative Spirit
A New Way of
Experiencing Music
Merging the boundaries of ambient, tribal & organic electronic, George Wallace delivers a fusion of deep trance percussion, primitive atmospheres, and dream-soaked electronics into soundworlds of timeless tribal magic.
The body of his work explores the more melodic side of what has been called Ambient music - although the term 'ambient' itself is a kind of misnomer. While much of it is improvised, there is still an innate structure, and while not exactly 'jazz' (the fairly recent term 'Fourth-World' may apply) it's definitely not 'pop' music – the pieces are longform (averaging 8-10 minutes or so) instrumentals, but at times borrow from a more ‘songlike’ compositional style.
More than providing a musical backdrop to some ‘event’, George tends to make music which is the event itself. His soundstages often take on expansive and cinematic proportions. Over the years his iconoclastic approach to composing and recording has intrigued and inspired audiences, professional colleagues, and engineers alike.
George Wallace essentially places himself in a class all his own by creating refreshing, never-before-imagined combinations of musical genres and soundworlds.
An accomplished composer, performer, producer, and recording artist, Lancaster PA-based George Wallace is a master creator of visionary music and ambient soundworlds which speak of enlightenment and positivity to a planet which can really use it.
George grew up in Philadelphia in the ‘50s and ‘60s. He has been writing music of one kind or another ever since the age of seven. At age eight he began classical piano training, music theory and harmony – a pursuit which he eventually not so much abandoned as added to. By the mid-60s the British Invasion, the Motown phenomenon, and the emergence of Brian Wilson (the genius behind the Beach Boys’ productions) had captured his fancy and provided much early inspiration for his budding gift.
After majoring in composition and arranging at the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston, Wallace put his versatility and prolific output on full display for decades-and-counting. His illustrious career includes a staff-writer position with Screen Gems, two albums released on CBS/Epic Records, the production of several planetarium soundtracks, a critically acclaimed three-record set of exercise music for children, a long history of live performance, airplay on numerous nationally-syndicated radio programs, and production of an ever-growing catalog of self-released full-length albums.
Spanning multiple genres, his creative output ranges from adult-contemporary message-based songs (with tinges of psychedelia, jazz and folk) to music composed for film, to soaring, progressive rock, and on into the world of magical, ambient soundscapes framed in expansive and cinematic proportions.
In places the music is calming - even hypnotic. At other times we are spellbound by powerful ensembles of tribal drums and voices, simultaneously borrowing from the celestial future and the primal past. Indeed, George’s creative world is a world of wild, dream-soaked sound, sometimes tender but always intense, of-and-for the spirit: quite literally soul music, offered as a bona-fide auditory happening, a wide-screen experience of exotic places and times well beyond this one.
Most recently George has released Etherica Blue, a collection of seven brand-new atmospheric compositions. As with most of his instrumental work, the music of Etherica Blue doesn't fall very easily into just one category. George's distinctive compositional style reveals itself through his process of combining several musical genres into a new hybrid uniquely his own. Thus, his ‘starting point’ might be a variant of Ambient - but often aspects of Contemporary Instrumental, Electronica, Neo-Classical, and Fourth World are brought into the mix. George also tends to lean away from the Berlin-School style (characterized by long repeating runs of short, sequenced notes) embraced by many of his contemporaries, instead allowing influence by way of a more ‘English’ approach, best exemplified in the work of Jade Warrior, Peter Gabriel, and Brian Eno.
Whether it be by way of a progressive rock song, or music for film, or some magical ambient odyssey, the irrepressible George Wallace has carved out a 'je ne sais quoi' all his own. In so doing, he’s discovered appreciative, admiring audiences from around the world who have been paying attention for a very long time.
