# Farewell to Ralph Towner: He had an instantly identifiable and individual style: Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2026/02/28/farewell-to-ralph-towner-he-had-an-instantly-identifiable-and-individual-style-video-photos/
- Published: 2026-02-28T05:55:29+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Deeply saddened to hear that guitarist, pianist and composer Ralph Towner passed
away on 18th January. Whether playing classical or 12-string guitar Towner had an
instantly identifiable and individual style, or indeed his first instrument, the
piano.**

Starting out on piano as a child and ultimately training as a classical pianist,
Towner also studied classical guitar in Vienna in the mid-1960s. By the end of the
decade, he was in New York playing jazz as a pianist and falling under the spell
of Bill Evans.

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 By the late 1960s and early 1970s he was also playing and improvising on
both classical and 12-string guitars, and though he would continue to perform on
piano throughout his career, in the latter part of his life it was the guitar that
would be his instrument of choice.

![Ralph Towner 1940-2026 - Paul E Nelson](https://i0.wp.com/paulenelson.com/wp-content/
uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-18-at-11.35.15-AM.png?resize=1080%2C675&ssl=1)

As a founder member of the group Oregon in 1970, Towner along with Paul McCandless,
Colin Walcott and Glen Moore found considerable success in a hybrid group that draw
on music Indian classical music, free improvisation and folk music. It was around
this time that Towner met record producer Manfred Eicher and so began an association
with Eicher and ECM Records that would last more than fifty years.

Towner played a vital role in some of the imprints early albums and was instrumental
in helping define what would become known as the ECM sound. The recording Dis with
under Jan Garbarek’s name would become one of the labels signature recordings of
the 1970’s as would be his own album, Solstice.

![The Perennially Eclectic Guitarist Ralph Towner Is Still Defying  Categorization
| Acoustic Guitar](https://i0.wp.com/acousticguitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/
09/2085_Towner-Fresu_02.jpg?resize=750%2C494&ssl=1)

In addition to collaboration on other artist’s recordings, Towner recorded prolifically
recording many solo guitar albums. His first solo endeavour was the wonderful Diary
recorded in April 1973 which the guitarist uses the studio to overdub multiple layers
and can be heard playing guitar and accompanying himself on piano, and 2016 was 
in the studio making the excellent My Foolish Heart that features acoustic guitar
throughout.

For the most part Towner focussed on purely acoustic music and the interplay with
other musicians, and there can few who heard the maestro perform live or on record
that were not moved by his playing. Whether playing solo or collaborating with John
Abercrombie, Gary Burton and Paolo Frescu in a duo format, or indeed with the quartet
Oregon, Ralph Towner was one of a kind.

![Focused: An appreciation of the genre-bending guitar work of Ralph Towner -  Fretboard
Journal](https://i0.wp.com/images.fretboardjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/
18205407/ralph_towner-141-copy-1024x682.jpg?resize=640%2C426&ssl=1)

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