Collection: Oregon

Oregon never fit a category, and that was the point. Ralph Towner, Glen Moore, Paul McCandless and Collin Walcott came together through Paul Winter's Consort in 1970, four musicians who'd absorbed Indian classical music, European chamber composition, folk and jazz improvisation in roughly equal measure, and decided none of those labels described what they wanted to play. Their run on Vanguard through the 1970s, starting with "Music of Another Present Era" (1972) and including "Distant Hills" (1973) and "Winter Light" (1974), established a sound built on Towner's classical and twelve-string guitar, McCandless's oboe and bass clarinet, Moore's bass and violin, and Walcott's tabla and sitar: never quite jazz, never quite world music, always something specific to the four of them. A brief stint on Elektra followed before the group's most acclaimed period on ECM, where "Oregon" (1983) and "Crossing" (1984) extended the same project with a sharper, more focused sound. Walcott's death in 1984 ended that lineup, but the group reformed and continued for decades after, eventually adding drummer Mark Walker. What you'll find here spans the Vanguard originals through to the ECM years, the period most collectors come looking for first.