Ralph Towner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Guitarist
- arranger
- bandleader
- composer
Ralph Towner | |
|---|---|
 Towner performing with Oregon in 1989 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | March 1, 1940 Chehalis, Washington, U.S. |
| Died | January 18, 2026 (aged 85) Rome, Italy |
| Genres | |
| Occupations |
|
| Instruments |
|
| Years active | 1960–2026 |
| Label | ECM |
| Website | www |
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]
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
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
Two lunar craters were named by the Apollo 15 astronauts after two of Towner's compositions, "Icarus" and "Ghost Beads".[12][13]
