Ralph Towner

One of modern jazz's most gifted and versatile musicians, Ralph Towner is noted as a brilliant 12-string acoustic guitarist, with a huge catalogue of recordings, both solo and with the band Oregon, while pushing the boundaries of jazz in his fusions with classical and world music. Born in Chehalis, Washington, on March 1, 1940, his mother was a piano teacher and his father a trumpeter, so Ralph Towner was raised in a strong musical family, improvising on the piano by the time he was three and taking trumpet lessons at the age of five. However, he didn't take up his main instrument - guitar - until he was at the University of Oregon, studying classical composition under Homer Keller. He later studied classical guitar in Vienna, where he also began playing with chamber orchestras. Piano remained his main instrument, however, when - strongly influenced by Bill Evans - he started playing jazz in New York clubs in the late 1960s and joined Paul Winter's Winter Consort. In 1971 he and several other Consort members broke away to form the band Oregon, who had a more improvised approach which involved influences from folk music and they went on to make over 30 albums together between 1970 and 2012. Signed to the ECM label, Oregon proved to be the platform needed for Ralph Towner to be recognised as a great guitarist, resulting in collaborations with other influential jazz artists including Keith Jarrett, Bill Bruford and Weather Report. He also went on to record over 40 albums in his own right, exploring the boundaries between different musical genres, at one point collaborating with Kazakhstani classical guitarist Slava Grigoryan and Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel on tour and on the albums From a Dream (2008) and Travel Guide (2013). Continuing to improvise, Ralph Towner went on to work with Argentinian saxophonist Javier Girotto and the ensemble Aires Tango, releasing Duende in 2016. The following year, however, Ralph Towner was back playing solo guitar on the album My Foolish Heart. His last recording, At First Light, was released in March 2023. On January 18, 2026, Ralph Towner, who lived in Italy -in Palermo then in Rome- died at the age of 85.