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Ralph Towner

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Ralph Towner
Ralph Towner in concert with Paolo Fresu, Treibhaus Innsbruck 2010
Ralph Towner in concert with Paolo Fresu, Treibhaus Innsbruck 2010
Background information
Birth nameRalph Towner
Born (1940-03-01) March 1, 1940 (age 84)
Chehalis, Washington, United States
GenresJazz, classical, world, folk
Occupation(s)Guitarist, arranger, bandleader, composer
Instrument(s)12-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion, trumpet
Years active1960s–present
LabelsECM
Websitewww.ralphtowner.com

Ralph Towner (born March 1, 1940, Chehalis, Washington) is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and bandleader. He plays the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion and trumpet.[1]

Biography

Ralph Towner with Oregon at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay CA 4/30/89.

Towner was born into a musical family in Chehalis, Washington. His mother was a piano teacher and his father a trumpet player. Towner learned to improvise on the piano at the age of three. He began his career as a conservatory-trained classical pianist, attending the University of Oregon from 1958-1963, where he also studied composition with Homer Keller.[2] He studied classical guitar at the Vienna Academy of Music with Karl Scheit from 1963-64 and 1967-68.

He joined world music pioneer Paul Winter's "Consort" ensemble in the late 1960s. He first played jazz in New York City in the late 1960s as a pianist and was strongly influenced by the renowned jazz pianist Bill Evans. He began improvising on classical and 12-string guitars in the late 1960s/early 1970s and formed alliances with musicians who had worked with Evans, including flautist Jeremy Steig, bassists Eddie Gómez, Marc Johnson, Gary Peacock, and drummer Jack DeJohnette.[3][4]

Along with bandmates Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, and Collin Walcott, Towner left the Winter Consort in 1970 to form the group Oregon, which over the course of the 1970s issued a number of highly influential records mixing folk music, Indian classical forms, and avant-garde jazz-influenced free improvisation. At the same time, Towner began a longstanding relationship with the influential ECM record label, which has released virtually all of his non-Oregon recordings since his 1973 debut as a leader Trios / Solos.

Towner appeared as a sideman on Weather Report's 1972 album I Sing the Body Electric. His 1975 album Solstice which featured a popular track called Nimbus demonstrates his skill and versatility to the full using a 12-string guitar.[5]

Since the early 1990s, Towner has lived in Italy, first in Palermo and then in Rome.[6]

Technique

Towner eschews amplification, using only 6-string nylon-string and 12-string steel-string guitars. As a result, he tends to avoid high-volume musical environments, preferring small groups of mostly acoustic instruments that emphasize dynamics and group interplay. Towner also obtains a percussive effect (e.g., "Donkey Jamboree" from Slide Show with Gary Burton) from the guitar by weaving a matchbook among the strings at the neck of the instrument.[7] Both with Oregon and as a solo artist, Towner has made significant use of overdubbing, allowing him to play piano (or synthesizer) and guitar on the same track; his most notable use of the technique came on his 1974 album Diary, in which he plays guitar-piano duets with himself on most of the album's 8 tracks.[8] In the 1980s, Towner began using the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 synthesizer extensively[9] but has since de-emphasized his synthesizer and piano playing in favor of guitar.

Honors

Two lunar craters were named by the Apollo 15 astronauts after two of Towner's compositions, "Icarus" and "Ghost Beads."[10][11]

Discography

As leader

With Atmosphere

  • Atmospheres Featuring Clive Stevens & Friends (Capitol, 1974)
  • Voyage to Uranus (Capitol, 1974)

With Oregon

  • Music of Another Present Era (Vanguard, 1972)
  • Distant Hills (Vanguard, 1973)
  • Winter Light (Vanguard, 1974)
  • In Concert (Vanguard, 1975)
  • Together (Vanguard, 1976)
  • Friends (Vanguard, 1977)
  • Out of the Woods (Elektra, 1978)
  • Violin (Vanguard, 1978)
  • Roots in the Sky (Elektra, 1979)
  • Moon and Mind (Vanguard, 1979)
  • In Performance (BGO, 1980)
  • Our First Record (Vanguard, 1980)
  • Oregon (ECM, 1983)
  • Crossing (ECM, 1985)
  • Ecotopia (ECM, 1987)
  • 45th Parallel (Portrait, 1989)
  • Always, Never, and Forever (veraBra, 1991)
  • Troika (veraBra, 1994)
  • Beyond Words (Chesky, 1995)
  • Northwest Passage (ECM, 1997)
  • Music for a Midsummer Night's Dream (Oregon Music 1998)
  • Oregon in Moscow (ECM, 2000)
  • Live at Yoshi's (ECM, 2002)
  • Prime (C.A.M. Jazz, 2005)
  • 1000 Kilometers (C.A.M. Jazz, 2007)
  • In Stride (C.A.M. Jazz, 2010)
  • Family Tree (C.A.M. Jazz, 2012)
  • Live in New Orleans (Hi Hat, 2016)
  • Lantern (C.A.M. Jazz, 2017)

With Paul Winter Consort

  • Road (A&M, 1970)
  • Icarus (Epic, 1972)
  • Earthdance (A&M, 1977)

As sideman or guest

References

  1. ^ "Biography". 1940-03-01. Retrieved 2019-11-30.
  2. ^ "Oregon ComposersWatch: Homer Keller". composerswatch.proscenia.net. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
  3. ^ Feather, Leonard (2007). The biographical encyclopedia of jazz. Gitler, Ira. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 650. ISBN 9780195320008. OCLC 123233012.
  4. ^ "Ralph Towner | Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
  5. ^ Cline, Nels (2017). "Focused: An appreciation of the genre-bending guitar work of Ralph Towner". Fretboard Journal. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
  6. ^ Jazz, All About. "Ralph Towner: The Accidental Guitarist". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
  7. ^ Lesson, Dale Turner 2018-03-19T14:53:03Z. "Ralph Towner's Nylon and 12-String Craftsmanship". guitarworld. Retrieved 2019-08-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ "Diary - Ralph Towner". ECM Records. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
  9. ^ Grillo, Tyran (2011-12-20). "Ralph Towner: Blue Sun (ECM 1250)". Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
  10. ^ "The Consort". Paul Winter. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  11. ^ "Now he's over the moon about Icarus". The Sydney Morning Herald. 2002-11-25. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
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