Ralph Towner: At First Light (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

Towner: Flow; Strait; Jule Styne, Betty Comden, Adolph Green: Make Someone Happy; Towner: Ubi Sunt; Guitarra Picante; At First Light; (Traditional): Danny Boy; Towner: Fat Foot; Argentinian Nights; Stanley Adams, Hoagy Carmichael: Little Old Lady; Towner: Empty Stage. Ralph Towner, classical guitar. ECM 2758 486 1035 

 

Long-time music fans may remember American guitarist Ralph Towner (b. 1940) from his long association with the band Oregon, a group that Towner co-founded back in 1970. Oregon went on to release a number of albums on the Vanguard, Elektra, ECM, and Intuition labels over the years. (The Oregon album Out of the Woods from 1978 is especially well worth seeking out; it is an acoustic and musical wonder.) In his liner notes for At First Light, a solo guitar outing, Towner writes about how unique it is to have most of his own having most of his own life’s work represented on one record label. He’s been an ECM artist for more than fifty years, appearing in many different contexts, one of the most important being a run of solo recordings that began with Diary in 1973, and now 50 hears later, At First Light is the newest addition to his series of solo guitar releases. “My solo recordings,” writes Towner, “have always included my own compositions in which there are trace elements of the composers and musicians that have attracted me over the years. Musicians such as George Gershwin, John Coltrane, John Dowland, Bill Evans, to name a few. The blend of keyboard and guitar techniques is an important aspect of my playing and composition, and I feel that this album is a good example of shaping this expanse of influences into my personal music.”

Towner recounts that he studied classical music composition in college while also becoming interested in learning jazz piano, having been inspired by hearing the interplay of the Bill Evans Trio. Before graduating from the University of Oregon in 1963, he discovered the classical guitar. “I found that it a very pianistic instrument,” he writes, “capable of sophisticated polyphony and myriad tone colors. I was fascinated by it. I made a major decision to travel to Vienna to strictly study the classical guitar at the Academy of Music in Vienna. My studies there involved much renaissance and baroque music which was to play a great part in shaping my writing and performance techniques.”  A fellow guitarist, Scott Nygaard, has observed of Towner that “No one else plays guitar like Ralph Towner. And while his compositions often sound ‘classical’ (combining a fondness for baroque voice leading, Stravinskian harmonies, and odd time signatures with his own strong sense of melody) that’s primarily because each piece grows organically and gracefully from an initial idea.” Listeners can get additional insight into the both the guitarist and the music on the album from this video, in which Towner recounts some of the details of his musical education and how he approaches composition and recording, focusing briefly on the album’s title composition, At First Light.

From the opening cut, his composition Flow, the majority of the music has the feeling of classical guitar music – not jazz (although jazz fans will hear a faint echo of Naima in the opening measures of Strait), not blues, not folk, but music very much in the classical guitar vein. Yes, they're a couple popular tunes and a traditional favorite included in the set list, but Towner does not play these in an overtly popular style. Instead, he plays them in more of a restrained way so that although the familiar notes are there, they blend right in with his more thoughtful, classical approach. Guitarra Piccante and Fat Foot are the most energetic cuts on the album; they might even tempt some listeners to tap their toes or even dance around a little, but should not cause anyone to get arrested. The shortest cut on the CD (1:42),Argentinian Nights, is like a miniature sketch of an imagined memory somehow captured on guitar, brief but memorable. The album ends with the reflective sounds of Empty Stage, a piece that ends enigmatically, leaving the listener longing for more. Ralph Towner was 82 at the time he made this recording, bringing a lifetime of lived experience into the studio with him to record alongside his trusted producer of more than 50 years, Manfred Eicher. The two old friends have produced a gem.