The tale most often repeated is that Story was a pianist in a restaurant on the west coast and began improvising "break" music between the standards she was hired to play. Not only did she begin to get requests for the "breaks" (and so had to invent titles for them as well as write them down), but an agent asked for permission to tape some, in order to shop the tunes to labels. Story didn't have much confidence in the effort, but it paid off and her first album, "Solid Colors", came out on Windham Hill records in 1982. Then came such releases as "Unaccountable Effect" (1985), "Speechless" (1988) and "Part of Fortune" (1990), with those last two being on the Novus label rather than Windham. Her greatest hits collection "Welcome Home" found her returning to her original label.
Her ambient style relies on New Age conventions such as apparently coda-filled repititions, but the effect can be soothing. She even did a collection of standards (My Foolish Heart), experimenting with the use of the new meter on old material.
Bio written by: Pete_Jamison |
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