William Ackerman - Hearing Voices (2001)

For this release, William Ackerman combines the energetic, hypnotic guitar playing that was featured on great albums of his like Childhood and Memory and Passage with vocals provided by a talented group of artists, many of whom he became acquainted with during his tenure as the head of Windham Hill. The result is an album that seems to be greater than the sum of its parts. Gentle, soothing vocals by the likes of Happy Rhodes, Samite, Noah Chase, and Heather Rankin are the perfect accompaniment for Ackerman's subtle guitar, which never seems relegated to the role of mere background texture, yet doesn't draw undue attention to itself either.