"I love George’s playing. He has captured the essence of the Doors, and added his own unique voice."

- Ray Manzarek.

Since first hearing Break On Through (to the Other Side) in 1967, solo pianist George Winston has been deeply influenced by the music of The Doors. His new album, Night Divides the Day – The Music of The Doors, features 13 solo piano versions of some of the Doors best known songs, including “People are Strange,” “Love Her Madly,” “Spanish Caravan,” “Love Me Two Times,” “Light My Fire,” “Riders on the Storm,” “The Crystal Ship,” as well as other more obscure Doors compositions.

Winston’s favorite instrument to listen to when growing up was the organ, and before he had learned to play it, he was always looking for records that featured the organ. In 1967, when he heard the first Doors’ album, it changed his life and was the major impetus for him to start playing. “When I heard my first Doors’ song, “Break on Through (to the Other Side),” to me it was the greatest piece of music I’d ever heard (unfortunately, it didn’t work out for me as a solo piano piece). It is a perfect song – the arrangement, dynamics, lyrics, the great jazz-influenced drumming and percussion by John Densmore, the beautiful guitar lines by Robby Krieger, the incredibly powerful and unique organ instrumental break by Ray Manzarek, with his simultaneously hypnotic bass lines, and those vocals by Jim Morrison. It was deeper to me than anything I’d ever heard. It was also the first time I had ever really paid attention to the lyrics of a song, and the first time I had been that affected by a whole album, musically and otherwise.”

Winston has listened to the Doors for well over thirty years and they continued to inspire him to this day. “The Doors also my main inspiration to record conceptual albums, especially Autumn.” Night Divides the Day evolved out of the eleven Doors songs that he had arranged as part of the repertoire for the solo R&B piano dances that he is doing more and more of. Most of Winston’s newest music is in the R&B style, inspired by the great New Orleans pianists Henry Butler, the late James Booker, the late Professor Longhair, and Dr. John, arranging soul, rock, slow dance songs, and standards into solo piano pieces. “The first volume of dance songs was to be the next album, but the Doors album moved ahead of it.”

“The Doors are historically one of the great teams in music, or in any endeavor, for that matter. They were not just a singer with a back-up band – the four musicians wove around each other as equals, and created a synergistic whole, more than the sum of the parts.”

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