Hearts of Space Playlists

Producer Stephen Hill

Contemplative music, broadly defined.

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.