At First Light (ECM)
Ralph Towner
Released March 2023
Jazzwise Top 50 Albums of the Year 2023
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About:
In his liner note for At First Light, Ralph Towner writes of the singularity of having most of his life’s work at 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 which began with Diary in 1973. At First Light is the newest addition to the solo guitar series. “My solo recordings,” says 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.”
Repertoire this time includes, in addition to new Towner pieces, the guitarist’s personal take on tunes from Broadway musicals. Hoagy Carmichael’s “Little Old Lady”(from The Show Is On), and Jule Styne’s “Make Someone Happy” (from Do Re Mi, a piece Bill Evans liked to play) are integrated here, as well as the much-covered Irish traditional air “Danny Boy”, which Towner also makes his own. He also looks again at “Guitarra Picante”, a piece from the songbook of the band Oregon.
Born into a musical family in Washington in 1940, Towner grew up immersed in classical music, jazz and the popular music of the day. A trumpet player from the age of seven, he took up piano seriously in his teens, in parallel studying composition, then embraced the classical guitar at 22. “I found that it was a very pianistic instrument, capable of sophisticated polyphony and myriad tone colours.” He subsequently moved to Vienna to study classical guitar. “My studies involved much renaissance and baroque music which was to play a great part in shaping my writing and performance techniques.”
As fellow guitarist Scott Nygaard has noted, “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.” Alongside the crucial inspirations from classical music and contemporary composition, Towner has also drawn profound influence from Bill Evans’s conception of jazz and also from Brazilian music.
“Over the years I kept on adapting each of these in my own way,” Towner has said: “ I abstracted them and modified them until the sources were no longer recognizable, and I’d arrived almost without noticing it in an idiom of my own.”
Towner’s ECM solo albums include Diary, Solo Concert, Ana, Anthem, Timeline and My Foolish Heart.
His extensive discography also includes duet recordings with John Abercrombie (Sargasso Sea, Five Years Later), Gary Peacock (Oracle, A Closer View), Gary Burton (Matchbook, Slide Show), Peter Erskine (Open Letter), and Paolo Fresu (Chiaroscuro). Ensemble albums include Solstice and Sound & Shadows (with Jan Garbarek, Eberhard Weber and Jon Christensen), Batik (with Eddie Gomez and Jack DeJohnette), Old Friends, New Friends (with Kenny Wheeler, David Darling, Eddie Gomez, and Michael di Pasqua), City of Eyes (with Markus Stockhausen, Paul McCandless, Gary Peacock and Jerry Granelli), Lost and Found (with Denney Goodhew, Marc Johnson and Jon Christensen), and Travel Guide (with Wolfgang Muthspiel, and Slava Grigoryan).
Ralph Towner has also contributed to albums by Keith Jarrett (In The Light), Jan Garbarek (Dis), Kenny Wheeler (Deer Wan), Egberto Gismonti (Sol do meio dia), Arild Andersen (If You Look Far Enough) and Azimuth (Départ). Since 1970, Towner has co-led the group Oregon, whose ECM recordings include the eponymously-titled Oregon and Ectopia. Ralph’s very first ECM recording, Trios/Solos, also featured Oregon members Glenn Moore, Collin Walcott and Paul McCandless.
Track Listing:
1. Flow (Ralph Towner) 05:06
2. Strait (Ralph Towner) 04:56
3. Make Someone Happy (Jule Styne, Adolph Green, Betty Comdon) 03:53
4. Ubi Sunt (Ralph Towner) 04:46
5. Guitarra Piccante (Ralph Towner) 04:25
6. At First Light (Ralph Towner) 04:44
7. Danny Boy (Traditional) 03:40
8. Fat Foot (Ralph Towner) 03:58
9. Argentinian Nights (Ralph Towner) 01:41
10. Little Old Lady (Hoagy Carmichael, Stanley Adams) 03:17
11. Empty Stage (Ralph Towner) 03:42
Personnel:
Ralph Towner: classical guitar
Recorded February 2022, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Photos: Caterina Di Perri
Design: Sascha Kleis
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Review:
Ralph Towner’s journey of discovery with his run of solo guitar albums that began with Diary in 1973 continues fifty years on with At First Light, and following this journey can be an extremely rewarding experience for the listener.
One of only a few artists who have recorded all their solo output for ECM, Towner’s discography for the imprint is as extensive as it is expansive. The guitarist, always ready to embrace new musical avenues has appeared on some seminal albums that are timeless masterpieces. This can also be said of his own recordings and especially the solo albums. Each appears to offer a career résumé to date, while also introducing new elements and developments in Towner’s music, and this new recording follows in this tradition.
As previously, Towner programs his solo albums with predominantly original compositions along with a standard or popular tune that gives an air of overall familiarity. In fact, the guitarist has processed his influences and refined his musical language to such a fine degree that often the new pieces will feel familiar too.
How he has managed to produce fresh and exciting music over a career of more than fifty years is a staggering achievement, and testament to Towner’s desire to continue to grow as an artist. His readings of ‘Make Someone Happy’ by Jule Styne and Hoagy Carmichael and Stan Adams’ ‘Little Old Lady’ are masterpieces of invention and understatement while the original tunes grow organically out of Towner’s towering past work yet seeking something new in the process.
Improvisation has always been a key ingredient in the guitarist’s music, and it is impossible to determine where formal composition ends, and improvisation becomes part of the process. With ECMs recording strategy of a day or two to record an album, and Towner acknowledges this process of very few takes requires total concentration, focus and spontaneity that ensures the music is never static but forever changing in the moment of creation.
Of his own compositions Towner revisits ‘Guitarra Picante’ that was a staple piece in the Oregon book, in which the guitarist stretches out with a stunning improvisation with the piece almost driving itself along. The opening ‘Flow’ does so at a very stately pace, each note made to count accompanied by some gorgeous rhythmic motifs; and the closing ‘Empty Stage’ leaves the listener pondering what has gone before in this outstanding addition to Towner’s discography.
Nick Lea (Jazz Views)
