Ralph Towner (March 1, 1940 – January 18, 2026) was an American musician who played many different musical instruments, composed music, arranged music for others, and led musical groups. He played the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, electric FRAME guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion, trumpet, and French horn.

Life and career

Towner was born on March 1, 1940, in Chehalis, Washington, United States. He was born into a musical family, with his mother teaching piano and his father playing the trumpet. Towner learned to make up music on the piano at age three. He began his career as a classically trained pianist, attending the University of Oregon from 1958 to 1963. There, he studied composition with Homer Keller. He also studied classical guitar at the Vienna Academy of Music with Karl Scheit from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1967 to 1968.

In the late 1960s, he joined Paul Winter’s "Consort" ensemble, which was known for exploring world music. He first played jazz in New York City during the late 1960s as a pianist and was greatly influenced by the famous jazz pianist Bill Evans. He began making up music on classical and 12-string guitars in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He worked with musicians who had previously played with Evans, including flautist Jeremy Steig, bassists Eddie Gómez, Marc Johnson, and Gary Peacock, and drummer Jack DeJohnette.

In 1970, Towner left the Winter Consort with bandmates Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, and Collin Walcott to form the group Oregon. During the 1970s, Oregon released many influential records that combined folk music, Indian classical music, and free improvisation inspired by avant-garde jazz. At the same time, Towner started a long partnership with the ECM record label, which released most of his non-Oregon recordings, beginning with his 1973 album Trios / Solos.

Towner played as a supporting musician on Weather Report’s 1972 album I Sing the Body Electric. His 1975 album Solstice, which included a popular song called "Nimbus," showed his skill and versatility using a 12-string guitar.

From the early 1990s, Towner lived in Italy, first in Palermo and later in Rome. He died in Rome on January 18, 2026, at the age of 85.

Technique

Towner played acoustic guitars, including six-string instruments with nylon strings and 12-string guitars with steel strings. He also used a six-string electric FRAME guitar. He preferred small musical groups that focused on quiet and loud sounds, and how musicians interacted together. To create a sound like a drum, Towner placed a matchbook between the strings on the neck of his guitar, as heard in the song "Donkey Jamboree" from the album Slide Show with Gary Burton. While performing with the group Oregon and as a solo artist, Towner used a technique called overdubbing, which allowed him to record piano or synthesizer and guitar on the same track. His most famous use of this method was on his 1974 album Diary, where he played both guitar and piano on most of the album’s eight songs. In the 1980s, Towner used a synthesizer called the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 often. However, he later focused more on playing guitar and less on synthesizer and piano.

Honors

During the Apollo 15 mission, astronauts named two lunar craters. The craters were named after two compositions by Towner, called "Icarus" and "Ghost Beads."

Discography

• Trios / Solos with Glen Moore (ECM, 1973)
• Diary (ECM, 1974)
• Solstice (ECM, 1975)
• Matchbook with Gary Burton (ECM, 1975)
• Sargasso Sea with John Abercrombie (ECM, 1976)
• Solstice/Sound and Shadows (ECM, 1977)
• Batik (ECM, 1978)
• Old Friends, New Friends (ECM, 1979)
• Solo Concert (ECM, 1980)
• Five Years Later with John Abercrombie (ECM, 1982)
• Blue Sun (ECM, 1983)
• Slide Show with Gary Burton (ECM, 1986)
• City of Eyes (ECM, 1989)
• Open Letter (ECM, 1992)
• If You Look Far Enough with Arild Andersen, Nana Vasconcelos (ECM, 1993)
• Oracle with Gary Peacock (ECM, 1994)
• Lost and Found (ECM, 1996)
• Ana (ECM, 1997)
• A Closer View with Gary Peacock (ECM, 1998)
• Verso with Maria Pia De Vito (Provocateur, 2000)
• Anthem (ECM, 2001)
• Time Line (ECM, 2006)
• From a Dream with Wolfgang Muthspiel and Slava Grigoryan (Material, 2008)
• Chiaroscuro with Paolo Fresu (ECM, 2009)
• Travel Guide with Wolfgang Muthspiel, Slava Grigoryan (ECM, 2013)
• My Foolish Heart (ECM, 2017)
• At First Light (ECM, 2023)

• Atmospheres Featuring Clive Stevens & Friends (Capitol, 1974)
• Voyage to Uranus (Capitol, 1974)

• Music of Another Present Era (Vanguard, 1972)
• Distant Hills (Vanguard, 1973)
• Winter Light (Vanguard, 1974)
• In Concert (Vanguard, 1975)
• Together (Vanguard, 1976)
• Friends (Vanguard, 1977)
• Out of the Woods (Elektra, 1978)
• Violin (Vanguard, 1978)
• Roots in the Sky (Elektra, 1979)
• Moon and Mind (Vanguard, 1979)
• In Performance (BGO, 1980)
• Our First Record (Vanguard, 1980)
• Oregon (ECM, 1983)
• Crossing (ECM, 1985)
• Ecotopia (ECM, 1987)
• 45th Parallel (Portrait, 1989)
• Always, Never, and Forever (veraBra, 1991)
• Troika (veraBra, 1994)
• Beyond Words (Chesky, 1995)
• Northwest Passage (ECM, 1997)
• Music for a Midsummer Night's Dream (Oregon Music, 1998)
• Oregon in Moscow (ECM, 2000)
• Live at Yoshi's (ECM, 2002)
• Prime (C.A.M. Jazz, 2005)
• 1000 Kilometers (C.A.M. Jazz, 2007)
• In Stride (C.A.M. Jazz, 2010)
• Family Tree (C.A.M. Jazz, 2012)
• Live in New Orleans (Hi Hat, 2016)
• Lantern (C.A.M. Jazz, 2017)

• Road (A&M, 1970)
• Icarus (Epic, 1972)
• Earthdance (A&M, 1977)

• Tribe (Columbia, 1973)
• Tales of the Exonerated Flea (Columbia, 1974)

• Koputai (ITM Pacific, 1990)
• One Day at a Time (ITM Pacific, 1990)

• Start Here (World Pacific, 1990)
• Instructions Inside (Manhattan, 1991)

With Maria Pia De Vito
• Nel Respiro (Provocateur, 2002)
• Moresche e Altre Invenzioni (Parco Della Musica, 2018)

• Azimuth, Départ (ECM, 1980) – recorded in 1979
• Salvatore Bonafede, Journey to Donnafugata (C.A.M. Jazz, 2004)
• Bill Bruford, If Summer Had Its Ghosts (Discipline Global, 1997)
• Gary Burton, Six Pack (GRP, 1992)
• Larry Coryell, The Restful Mind (Vanguard, 1975)
• Pino Daniele, Che Dio Ti Benedica (CGD, 1993)
• Cyrus Faryar, Cyrus (Collectors' Choice Music, 2006)
• Robben Ford, Blues Connotation (ITM Pacific, 1997)
• David Friesen, Waterfall Rainbow (Inner City, 1977)
• Jan Garbarek, Dis (ECM,