By Lynn Peisner

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Driving a Hertz rental car, George Winston has traveled through many landscapes on his way to Tuesday night's first performance of Decatur’s Eddie & Agnes concert series at Agnes Scott’s Presser Hall. As a composer and solo piano player strongly influenced by setting and seasons, he finds driving a useful way to travel.

Winston is known as a pioneer of the New Age music movement who translates mood and feeling through his interpretive playing, which is partially inspired by stride piano, a style popularized by 1930s jazz musician Fats Waller. He's also credited for inventing a style all his own in 1971 called rural folk piano.

We caught up with him over the phone, somewhere in New Mexico, for a chat about what attracts him to music.

Q: How’s the drive?

A: I’ve always liked driving. I get inspiration from various landscapes and places on Earth, from the different sites and energies and the gradual changing of the topography. Sometimes being taken off the beaten path is good.

Q: We know you don’t want microphones at this show in Decatur. What else can audiences expect from the performance? Will you perform in your socks?

A: Yes, shoes make too much noise on the floor. And I don’t like the sound of a miked piano. I’ll be playing fall and winter songs. Some Vince Guaraldi, folk and melodic piano, New Orleans R&B. I’m sure the drive over will inspire something, too. I have yet to make it to the Great Plains, Tennessee and Alabama. I want [the journey] to affect what I play. We’re all influenced by the seasons whether we think about it or not.

Q: When you perform other people’s music, like Frank Zappa or the Doors, it’s known as an “interpretation,” not a cover. What do you hear in your favorite music that makes you want to take it to another level?

A: There’s no deliberate process, I just like the song and I want to interact with it. Over time, I kind of figure out that I’ll do one song the same way the composer did it, but I’ll do this other one a different way. Some songs get changed a whole lot; I’ll change the keys and the tempo. Some don’t get changed very much at all.

The three composers that I’ve tried to play all their music over the years have been Professor Longhair, the Doors and Vince Guaraldi. I’ve even tried to play all the songs that they’ve tried to interpret for somebody else, the way the Doors do Willie Dixon’s “Back Door Man.”

Q: Your music takes people on a journey. When you sit down to play, do you think about how that journey’s going to begin and end for listeners?

A: I’m always thinking of a picture and a place. If I’m not thinking about that, I won’t play the song. It would just be a bunch of notes. I try to make practical use of all my experience. Whether it’s music or survival or someone else’s survival. To me it all gets down to pragmatism. Something tangible that I’m thinking of. I’ve lived long enough to know that the subconscious knows what it’s doing. Just let it do it. To me, the subconscious is like the hard drive and my conscious is like the screen.

If you go

George Winston

8 p.m. Feb. 23. Agnes Scott College, Presser Hall. $25-$35. Ticketalternative.com . 877-725-8849