TOWNER RALPH, GUITAR WORKS VOLUME 2.
About Ralph Towner - Guitar Works, Volume 2
By Ralph Towner. For Guitar. Folk Rock. Level: Intermediate-Advanced. Instrumental Album. 52 pages.
Known as the founding member of the group Oregon, and the composer of Icarus, he is also regarded for his solo guitar compositions. The second volume of Towner's guitar works contains nine songs including Always By Your Side, The Hollows, Toledo, and more.
Ralph Towner was bornin Washington state in 1940, moved to Oregon state at age of five and grew up there. He began to improvise at piano at age of 4, imitating recordings from the WW II era. His mother was a piano teacher and church organist, and each member of the family played one or several musical instruments well.
He studied classical composition at theUniversity of Oregon, graduated in 1963 and went toVienna, 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 studies in composition with Professor Homer Keller, then returned for a second year of study in Vienna with Professor Scheit. He then moved to New York City in 1968 to continue his career as guitarist-pianist-composer in earnest.
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 'Grammies' (Deutsche Shallplatten 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 his group Oregon (Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, Trilok Gurtu); the Downbeat magazine poll for acoustic guitar: The New York jazz Award as best New York City acoustic guitarist; and a Grammy nomination in 2000 as best composer for Oregon in Moscow: He has performed in concert world-wide in Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern and Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Korea, 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 two-hundred 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 orchestra works
by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, where he was composer-in-residence, and by the AT&T-Rockefeller foundation. He received a WYNC/Aaron Copland commission to compose the piano
sonata Simulacrum in 1999; His film scores include Un' Altra Vita by Carlo Mazzacurati as well as
numerous documentary films. He has composed music for L'lsola Incandescente, a play adapted
from the writings of Vincenzo Consolo, and incidental music for Shakespeare's 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.
If
Toledo
Anniversary Song
Always By Your Side
The Hollows
Turning Of The Leaves
The Pendant
The Lizards of Eraclea
Mingusiana
Italiano
English
