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| Ralph Towner at Jazzwerkstatt Peitz in 2020 |
By Paul Acquaro
Saddened to learn about the passing of guitarist Ralph Towner over the
weekend. Towner had a truly distinctive and influential voice on the
acoustic guitar and in modern jazz. His use of the nylon-string and
12-String guitar was formative in style and always a pleasure to hear on
recordings and especially in concert.
To steal from my own review of My Foolish Heart (ECM, 2017), Towner's playing was a perfect blend of sophistication and irreverence to
genre. Not really jazz, certainly not free jazz, and not classical either,
his compositions lived comfortable between and outside of categorization.
Towner is probably most well known for his work with the band Oregon, and he also
had a long and fruitful recording career with ECM. Some of my favorites recordings of his include the two duo recordings with John Abercrombie, Sargasso Sea
(1976) and Five Years Later (1982), but even more so, Solstice
(1975), his first as a leader of the group with saxophonist
Jan Garbarek, bassist
Eberhard Weber
and drummer
Jon Christensen. The recording, and its successor, Sounds and Shadows (1977), exemplify the best of ECM and his own approach, namely spacious,
lyrical, and harmonically rich music.
Of course, Towner's work is far more complete than these few recordings and are all worth a visit, up to his last release, At First Light from 2023. In addition
to his warm, narrative, and harmonically adventurous guitar playing, Towner also
played piano, synthesizer, trumpet and French horn. However, it was really
on guitar, in which he applied his classical training to create a unique mix
of jazz, folk, classical and world music.
Ralph Towner passed away on 18 January 2026 at age 85 in Rome.
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