Pianist Liz Story studied music at Hunter College and at Juilliard. “Although she was an accomplished pianist, (she) lost interest in a music career until she saw Bill Evans play one night at the Bottom Line in New York,” (MusicianGuide). “That concert opened up performance possibilities that she had never considered. ‘What hit me was the improvisation. I had the impression that improvising music had died in the 18th century, that it was a musical feat people knew about in some other time,’ she told DownBeat. ‘All these lights went on. I had, for the first time, a clear idea of what I would do in music.’
The timing of Story’s entrance onto the music scene was fortuitous. She arrived when a new form of music, popularly dubbed New Age, was gaining wide acceptance. William Ackerman helped pioneer New Age music through his Windham Hill label, which he formed in 1976 to release his first album of guitar music … Story recorded her first solo album, Solid Colors, for Windham Hill in 1983. High Fidelity reviewed the album: ‘ … a virtually flawless technical capacity, a fine gift for melody, a great sense of creative passion … a performer-composer with the melodic power to move an audience.’ Story claims that she desires simplicity in her compositions. ‘When I sit at the piano, complexity dissolves. I want music to somehow move me, simple and stripped down as it may be. I wonder at the possibility that a melody of three notes can turn the heart.'”
Story’s 1983 track “Things With Wings” begins in F major; at 1:03, there’s a modulation to F# major, then a reversion to the original key at 1:46.
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