Ralph Towner on guitar. For more of his music, click the image.
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Ralph Towner was born in Chehalis, WA in 1940, moved to Oregon at age five and grew up there.
He began to improvise at the piano at age four, imitating recordings from the WW II era. His mother was a piano teacher and church organist, his father played trumpet, and each member of the family played one or several musical instruments well. Brass, string and woodwind groups were all represented in the family orchestra. Ralph began formal study on trumpet, and began playing in Dixieland, swing and polka bands at age seven, and became the youngest member to ever perform in the municipal band of Bend, Oregon. He studied classical composition at the University of Oregon, graduated in 1963 and went to Vienna, Austria to study classical guitar, an instrument he discovered in his fourth year of university. He studied one year under the renowned Professor Karl Scheit, returned to the University of Oregon for graduate work in composition with Professor Homer Keller, then returned for a second year of study in Vienna with Professor Scheit. He subsequently moved to New York City in 1968 to continue his career as guitarist-pianist-composer in earnest. In 1980 he added the keyboard synthesizers to his instrumental arsenal. He went on to join Paul Winter’s “Consort” assembly during the late 1960s. Towner foregoes amplification in favor of soothing acoustic classical guitar. In New York during the ’60s he was heavily influenced by hard bop pianist Bill Evans.
Since 1970 he has recorded over forty albums under his own name and has collaborated in concert and/or recording with OREGON, Keith Jarrett, Weather Report (Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter), Egberto Gismonti, Gary Burton, John Abercrombie, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, Jan Hammer, Eddie Gomez, Elvin Jones, Freddie Hubbard, Michel Portal, Dave Holland, Paul Winter Consort, and many others. He has won numerous awards, including: two German Grammy Awards (Deutscher Schallplatten Preis) for the best jazz recording of 1976 world-wide, (Solstice, with Jan Garbarek, Eberhard Weber and Jon Christenson), and again in 1988 for Ecotopia with OREGON (Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, Trilok Gurtu); the Downbeat magazine poll for acoustic guitar and the New York Jazz Award as best New York City acoustic guitarist. He has performed in concerts world-wide in Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern and Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Mexico and North America; in jazz clubs and major concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Berlin Philharmonic Hall, and Vienna’s Mozartsaal.
Towner has recorded over one hundred-fifty of his instrumental compositions.
His works for orchestra have been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Stuttgart Opera Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Freiburg Festival Orchestra and the Stavanger Chamber Orchestra of Norway. He has been commissioned to compose large orchestral works by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, where he was composer-in-residence, and by the AT&T-Rockefeller Foundation. His film scores include Un Altra Vita by Carlo Mazzacurati as well as numerous documentary films. He has composed music for L’ Isola Incandescente, a play adapted from the writings of Vincenzo Consolo, and incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His compositions have been used by numerous dance choreographers including Alvin Ailey, Pilobolus, and Murray Louis. He was honored by Apollo astronauts, who carried his music on cassette to the moon and officially named two moon craters after two of his compositions.
His most recent record releases are:
Oregon ~ Live At Yoshi’s, ANTHEM, a guitar solo recording for ECM, and Oregon In Moscow, a double CD of symphony orchestra music (ten compositions by Towner for OREGON and orchestra) recorded with the Moscow Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra in Moscow. “The Templars”, the fourth track on disc 1 of this album, received a 2001 Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Composition.
The music of Ralph Towner is known for its blend of folk, Indian, and avant-garde jazz styles, and he continues to tour and record.
Ralph Towner performs. Here is “I Fall in Love Too Easily.”