Collection: Ralph Towner

Ralph Towner came to the guitar backwards. He trained as a classical pianist, studied composition at the University of Oregon, then went to Vienna to study classical guitar with Karl Scheit before settling in New York in the late 1960s. That training shows in everything he played: dense, contrapuntal voicings on the twelve string and nylon string guitar that sound like a pianist's idea of what a guitar could do, occasionally proven literally true on records where he overdubbed himself on both instruments. He co-founded Oregon in 1970 with Glen Moore, Paul McCandless and Collin Walcott, and the following year met ECM founder Manfred Eicher, beginning a relationship that ran for more than fifty years and produced over twenty albums as a leader. "Diary" (ECM, 1974), his first solo recording, introduced the guitar and piano overdub technique he'd return to throughout his career. "Solstice" (ECM, 1975), with Jan Garbarek, Eberhard Weber and Jon Christensen, is widely credited as the record that first defined what people mean by "the ECM sound." Towner died in January 2026, leaving behind a catalogue that runs in parallel to Oregon's, distinct from it, and just as essential.