Best known as the frontman and bassist for the '80s hair metal band Winger, Kip Winger is an icon whose name has circulated the industry alongside rock giants like Alice Cooper and Dokken.
However, his musical gifts aren't restricted to just "music for headbanging," because surprisingly, Winger also has some very refined "classical chops," at least enough to earn him a Grammy nomination for contemporary classical composition back in 2017.
Kip Winger's Journey From Shredding Amps to Conducting Bows and Strings
In an interview with Ultimate Guitar, Winger shared the "event horizon" that pulled him away from the rock genre and pushed him into the world of classical music, which involved an animation series made for adults called "Beavis and Butthead" making fun of Winger's then-band and namesake.
"Everybody knows Beavis and Butthead had favorite bands and then made fun of a lot of bands and was hugely influential," shared Winger.
He added that the show's influence was so big to a point that it boosted the popularity of another band called "White Zombie," and that the show's influence when it comes to bands was just a case of kids in that generation wanting to have "their own music" in order to "separate themselves" from the others, which the band "Winger" just got on "the wrong side" off.
However, for Winger it was a blessing in disguise, saying, "For me personally, although it hurt the band, it helped me... it became the time when I studied - when I had the time to actually go back and really dig into my classical chops."
He even attributed that whole incident to him eventually bagging the Grammy nod in 2017 for his compositional work. Winger shared that had the incident not happened, he probably would not have been able to hone his craft as a classical musician as well, or at all.
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The Classical Music Roots of Kip Winger
Astoundingly, Winger's background actually goes way back earlier than his rock career. As a kid, the then-frontman studied ballet and immersed himself in the works of contemporary classical legends like Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky, a direct 180-degree flip from his previous musical obsessions at the time of bands like "Jethro Tull," "Yes," "Gentle Giant," and "Genesis."
In his own words, "I just did it for the love of it." This mindset helped the musician focus on his craft who reportedly privately studied classical music as a "university student" would. Eventually, Winger landed a ballet with the San Francisco Ballet that was considerably popular after it started its performances.
To add, Winger's only #1 album was a classical record. He has even been recently commissioned by the prestigious Nashville Symphony to compose an album to be distributed by acclaimed classical publisher Naxos Records. As for his first symphony, Winger enjoyed its debut last March of 2022.
All in all, this has been strange for Winger, according to him, solely because despite his background in an opposite genre to classical music, the symphonies and ensembles just come "very naturally" to Winger.
"It's just easy to do it in terms of... I hear it and it's really mostly what I hear. I don't hear like, rock songs much - since about '92. And that's really why I did it," he said.
