Randall Avers plays Ralph Towner

Ralph Towner has made an indelible imprint on the American musical landscape in a way that only a chosen few contemporary musicians have been able to do. Though the legacy of his compositional influence has almost developed subliminally during the enduring march of his career, history has rightfully begun to acknowledge the incredible breadth and depth of his artistic contributions to both the classical and jazz idioms. Classically trained on the guitar in his youth by Karl Scheit in Vienna, Towner’s more immediate destiny in the 1970s was not to influence classical music, but rather the evolving and parallel subgenres of jazz during a time of intense creativity which saw the birth of such diverse forms as fusion and chamber jazz. Towner was a renegade among his jazz peers in his choice of classical and 12-string guitars to craft together skittering but beautiful melodies with unusual chordal voicings, as well as in his ability to coalesce elements of jazz and classical music into never-before-heard hybrids of acoustic and epic musical dramas. Towner’s first platform to realize this new music was the ensemble “Oregon,” made up of likeminded virtuoso musicians (Paul McCandless on oboe, Glen Moore on bass, Collin Walcott and later Trilok Gurtu and most recently Mark Walker on percussion) who were willing to embrace elements of folk, world and free-form improvisation into their unique brand of acoustic jazz. Side projects with jazz luminaries the likes of Gary Burton and John Abercrombie followed, and later Towner’s skill and ease with the solo format took a firm root with the 1979 release of Solo Concert – a live and extemporaneous statement of his arrival as a brilliant soloist. No one had yet similarly synthesized classical contrapuntal composition and oddly-metered jazz like this before, and the form was to become his trademark thereafter. His many solo recordings which followed, including Blue Sun, Open Letter, Anthem, Ana and Timeline set the bar into the stratosphere for clarity of guitar tone while faithfully capturing Towner’s inimitable and nearly sacred touch on the instrument.



Randall Avers is an American classical guitar performer and educator who currently resides and teaches in Norway. A protégé and now friend of Ralph Towner, Avers was granted a two-year scholarship (Staten skunstnerstipend) by the Norwegian government to study Towner’s music and create a solo recording of a collection of his works, culminating in the World Premier of Ralph Towner’s Maddalena Variations at the Texas Music Festival in 2011. The Maddalena Variations, and the “Prelude” which accompanies the Variations, have been heretofore unrecorded. The Variations were composed and performed by Ralph Towner in tandem to a theatrical performance in Italy written by his wife, and derived from a text by Marguerite Yourcenar which tells a story of unrequited love involving Mary Magdalene in her older years. The Variations are remarkable in that they seem to be a “coming home” for Towner to the more traditional classical forms in which he was originally trained in the 1960s. The Variations “Grazioso” and “Allegro” especially seem to diverge from Towner’s usual compositional spirit of joyful exultation into that of a rather dysphoric ambiance, but entirely in keeping with the mood that Yourcenar had sought to cultivate in his dark drama.



Suite for Guitar is a collection of three classically-influenced pieces: “Mevlana Etude,” “Caminata,” and “Juggler’s Etude.” The first of Towner’s academic pieces to be scored and published in 1983 with optional flute, oboe or violin, the recorded versions of Suite for Guitar by Towner are ironically elusive. “Caminata” and “Juggler’s Etude” appear in no modern digital catalogue, only on the vinyl version of Towner and Abercrombie’s collaboration entitled Five Years Later. “Juggler’s Etude” is a wonderful example of a Towner signature using a rapidly articulated and angular melody punctuated at intervals by a hypnotic rotation of notes.



“Always By Your Side” is a poignant pianistic ballad which likely owes a compositional debt to Towner’s boyhood hero, jazz pianist Bill Evans, and underscores Towner’s credo to serve melody and mood above ego with his compositions – a masterpiece which is just elegant, simple and beautiful.



“Les Douzilles” is the most oft-recorded song by Towner in this particular collection, found on two Towner solo albums (City of Eyes, Ana) and two Oregon albums (Beyond Words, 45th Parallel). Though the meaning or translation of “Les Douzilles” is cryptic and apparently unknowable, mirrored repeating phrases give a vivid impression of a leaf being quickly carried by a stream.



“Simone” exemplifies what lesser artists have difficulty assimilating into their art – patience. Towner’s unhurried use of silence and space between notes is legendary, and is critical to the success of this languid musical meditation which cleaves the yin and yang between sensuality and spirituality.

“Turning of the Leaves” is from Towner’s 2005 CD entitled Time Line, and originally recorded at Propstei St. Gerold, a monastery in the Austrian mountains, where Towner recalls playing without headphones and projecting the music into the natural reverberation of the church. The song, surprisingly, was originally written as a vocal piece while working with singer Maria Pia de Vito who added her own Neapolitan lyrics to the melody. As an instrumental version, the piece has a waltz-like feel much more in the classic tradition than Towner’s most well-known waltz – his transcription of the jazz standard “Waltz for Debby.”

Towner had entitled a recording and entire collection Anthem in 2001, and indeed, the style for many of his best compositions might be termed anthemic, conveying a sense of bittersweet balanced by an implicit redemption. “Green and Golden” is so, simultaneously wistful but optimistic, uplifting.

- Alan Fark, 2012