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Ralph Towner

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Ralph Towner
Towner with Oregon at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay, California, April 30, 1989
Towner with Oregon at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay, California, April 30, 1989
Background information
Born(1940-03-01)March 1, 1940
Chehalis, Washington, U.S.
DiedJanuary 18, 2026(2026-01-18) (aged 85)
Rome, Italy
GenresJazz rock, folk rock
OccupationsGuitarist, arranger, bandleader, composer
Instruments12-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion, trumpet, french horn
Years active1960–2026
LabelsECM
Websitewww.ralphtowner.com

Ralph Towner (March 1, 1940 – January 18, 2026) was an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He played the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, electric FRAME guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion, trumpet, and French horn.[1]

Life and career

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Towner was born into a musical family in Chehalis, Washington, United States, on March 1, 1940.[2] 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 to 1963, where he also studied composition with Homer Keller.[3] He studied classical guitar at the Vienna Academy of Music with Karl Scheit from 1963 to 1964 and 1967–68.[2]

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 and early 1970s and formed alliances with musicians who had worked with Evans, including flautist Jeremy Steig; bassists Eddie Gómez, Marc Johnson and Gary Peacock; and drummer Jack DeJohnette.[4][5]

Along with bandmates Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, and Collin Walcott, Towner left the Winter Consort in 1970 to form the group Oregon,[2] which over the course of the 1970s issued a number of 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 ECM record label, which released virtually all of his non-Oregon recordings beginning with his 1973 album Trios / Solos.[2]

Towner appeared as a sideman on Weather Report's 1972 album I Sing the Body Electric.[2] His 1975 album Solstice, which featured a popular track called "Nimbus", demonstrated his skill and versatility to the fullest using a 12-string guitar.[6]

From the early 1990s, Towner lived in Italy, first in Palermo and then in Rome.[7] He died in Rome on January 18, 2026, at the age of 85.[8]

Technique

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Towner performing in Innsbruck, Austria, 2010

Towner played acoustic guitars, using six-string nylon-string and 12-string steel-string guitars, as well as the six-string electric FRAME guitar. He tended to avoid high-volume musical environments, preferring small groups of mostly acoustic instruments that emphasize dynamics and group interplay. Towner obtained 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.[9] Both with Oregon and as a solo artist, Towner made 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 eight tracks.[10] In the 1980s, Towner began using the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 synthesizer extensively,[11] but has since de-emphasized his synthesizer and piano playing in favor of guitar.

Honors

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Two lunar craters were named by the Apollo 15 astronauts after two of Towner's compositions, "Icarus" and "Ghost Beads".[12][13]

Discography

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As leader

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As group

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Atmosphere

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

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)

Paul Winter Consort

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

As sideman or guest

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With Horacee Arnold

  • Tribe (Columbia, 1973)
  • Tales of the Exonerated Flea (Columbia, 1974)

With Jerry Granelli

  • Koputai (ITM Pacific, 1990)
  • One Day at a Time (ITM Pacific, 1990)

With Vince Mendoza

  • Start Here (World Pacific, 1990)
  • Instructions Inside (Manhattan, 1991)

With Maria Pia De Vito

  • Nel Respiro (Provocateur, 2002)
  • Moresche e Altre Invenzioni (Parco Della Musica, 2018)

With others

References

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  1. ^ "Biography". Ralphtowner.com. March 1, 1940. Retrieved November 30, 2019.
  2. ^ a b c d e Colin Larkin, ed. (1992). The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music (First ed.). Guinness Publishing. p. 2520. ISBN 0-85112-939-0.
  3. ^ "Oregon ComposersWatch: Homer Keller". Composerswatch.proscenia.net. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  4. ^ Feather, Leonard (2007). The biographical encyclopedia of jazz. Gitler, Ira. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 650. ISBN 9780195320008. OCLC 123233012.
  5. ^ "Ralph Towner | Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  6. ^ Cline, Nels (2017). "Focused: An appreciation of the genre-bending guitar work of Ralph Towner". Fretboard Journal. Retrieved February 20, 2020.
  7. ^ "Ralph Towner: The Accidental Guitarist". Allaboutjazz.com. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  8. ^ "Ralph Towner è morto a Roma. Addio al maestro del jazz". AGI. January 18, 2026. Retrieved January 18, 2026.
  9. ^ Dale Turner. "Ralph Towner's Nylon and 12-String Craftsmanship". Guitarworld.com. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  10. ^ "Diary - Ralph Towner". Ecmrecords.com. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  11. ^ Grillo, Tyran (December 20, 2011). "Ralph Towner: Blue Sun (ECM 1250)". Ecmreviews.com. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
  12. ^ "The Consort". Paulwinter.com. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  13. ^ "Now he's over the moon about Icarus". The Sydney Morning Herald. November 25, 2002. Retrieved August 11, 2019.
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