Paul Winter (born August 31, 1939 Altoona, PA) is an American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He is a pioneer of world music and earth music, which interweaves the voices of the wild with instrumental voices from classical, jazz and world music. The music is often improvised and recorded in nature to reflect the qualities brought into play by the environment.

In 1967 he started the Paul Winter Consort, influenced by Heitor Villa-Lobos and other Brazilian music, to give ensemble playing and soloing equal importance, analogous to a democracy where every voice would count. He borrowed the name from English Elizabethan theater of the 16th and 17th centuries, when bands combined woodwinds, strings, and percussion, the same families of instruments he wanted to combine in his contemporary consort. With this group, he became one of the earliest creators of world music.

Recordings of humpback whales in 1968 influenced his music, and his desire to become an environment activist. In 1977, his album Common Ground was his first to incorporate sounds of whales, eagles, and wolves into his music. The Paul Winter Consort recorded during the 1960s and 1970s. Four albums for A&M were produced by Phil Ramone and Paul Stookey. Astronauts of Apollo 15 took the Consort’s album Road to the moon with them and named two craters after the songs “Ghost Beads” and “Icarus”. George Martin produced the album Icarus and considered it one of the best he produced. The band Oregon was formed by band members who worked on this album: Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, and Collin Walcott.

In the early 1980s, Winter began traveling to the Soviet Union. In 1984, he ventured as far as Lake Baikal in Siberia, and found it so beautiful that he returned to try to protect it. In 1984, he became friends with Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Winter took part in the U.S.–Soviet Space Bridge to encourage collaboration between Russians and Americans. On a tour of the Soviet Union in 1986, the Consort performed with the Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble at Moscow University. During the next year the two bands recorded the album EarthBeat in Moscow and New York. It was the first album of music created together by Americans and Russians.

In 1980, Winter founded Living Music Records as a forum for his musical and ecological vision. The name alludes to his desire to make timeless music in natural acoustic spaces like stone churches, canyons, and barns.