Pianist Philip Aaberg of Windham Hill Records Dead at 77
PHILIP AABERG
April 8, 1949 – May 23, 2026
Pianist Philip Aaberg lived in San Francisco for the better part of three decades of his adult life. But he was born and raised in Montana. That’s the landscape that shaped his music, and that’s where he returned in the last decades of his life. Aaberg struck the final key on May 23, 2026.
Aaberg came to renown in the mid-1980s at the height of Windham Hill Records and made several albums for the label, including his critically acclaimed 1985 debut, High Plains. He continued releasing solo albums on the label until Cinema in 1992. Then he began releasing his records on his own Sweetgrass Music label. His 2001 album, Live from Montana, was nominated for a Grammy Award. If you haven’t heard his solo music, then you’ve heard him on some of the biggest pop hits of the 1970s. He played with Peter Gabriel, and he co-wrote material for Elvin Bishop’s Struttin’ My Stuff, the 1975 album that included Bishop’s biggest hit, “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.”
Born on April 8, 1949, in Havre, Montana, and raised in Chester, Aaberg began playing piano as a child and won a Leonard Bernstein Scholarship to Harvard University, where he studied music. After college, he moved to California and spent years in the worlds of blues and rock, touring and recording with artists including Elvin Bishop, Peter Gabriel, and members of the Doobie Brothers…