HEARTS of SPACE grew out of
former architect Stephen Hill's fascination with
space-creating, ambient and contemplative music.
Beginning in the early 1970s, Hill hosted a weekly
late-night radio program on KPFA-FM in the San
Francisco Bay area. What began purely as a labor of
love eventually became the most popular contemporary
music program on public radio. Over the intervening
quarter century, Hearts of Space evolved into a
multifaceted music and broadcast producer
encompassing radio syndication, a record company,
and now an Internet music service.
In January 1983, after ten
years evolution as a local program, Hearts of Space
began national syndication to 35 non-commercial
public radio stations via the NPR satellite system.
Hosted by Hill and original co-producer ANNA TURNER,
within three years the program signed its 200th
station and became the most successful new music
program in public radio history, as well as the most
widely syndicated program of
'spacemusic' — a tastemaker for the genre.
Now in its 24th year of
national syndication, a one hour program airs weekly
on about 220 NPR affiliate stations, including three
of the top five U.S. radio markets and a majority of
the top fifty. The program is also heard nationally
seven nights a week at 8pm Eastern/11pm Pacific on
XM Satellite Radio's 'AudioVisions' Channel 77.
Internet streaming began in
1999 on pioneer webcasters NetRadio and WiredPlanet as well as public radio station
sites, and evolved in 2001 into a full blown
subscription service offering on-demand access to
the entire Archive of almost 800 programs since
1983.
From the beginning, the
program's success has come from consistently high
production quality and sensitive, knowledgeable
music programming. The program has defined its
own niche — a mix of ambient, electronic, world, new
age, classical and experimental music. Artists
and record companies around the world recognize
Hearts of Space as the original, most widely heard,
premiere showcase for "contemplative music, broadly
defined."
Quality crafting is the
keystone of the HOS experience. After a brief intro,
each one hour show is an uninterrupted musical
journey, designed to create a relaxed but
concentrated ambience. Slow-paced, space-creating
music from many cultures — ancient bell meditations,
classical adagios, creative space jazz, and the
latest electronic and acoustic ambient music are
woven into a seamless sequence unified by sound,
emotion, and spatial imagery.
Old as they are,
contemplative sounds continue to evolve. Producer
Hill says "What's now being called Ambient music is
the latest chapter in the contemplative music
experience. Electronic instruments have created new
expressive possibilities, but the coordinates of
that expression remain the same. Space-creating
sound is the medium. Moving, significant music is
the goal."
The ancient resonances of
drums, bells, and flutes, the exotic tones of gongs
and gamelans, the digital sounds of the Ambient
frontier; in its third decade, Hearts of Space
continues to deliver the best of the contemplative
sound experience, with spacemusic from near and far
out.
