Results for "Ralph Towner"

Ralph Towner

Musical innovation is no easy feat. It not only requires an innate talent, but also a devotion to the art that is not blinded by the commercial glare of the popular culture. Ralph Towner is such an innovator on the modern musical landscape, his ideas ever fresh, though they span a career of more than forty years. Best known as the lead composer, guitarist, and keyboardist for the acoustic jazz ensemble "Oregon", Towner has also had a rich and varied solo career that has seen fruitful and memorable musical collaboration with such great modern musicians as Gary Burton, John Abercrombie, Egberto Gismonti, Larry Coryell, Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, and Gary Peacock. Towner was born in Chehalis, Washington on March 1st, 1940 into a musical family, his mother a piano teacher and his father a trumpet player

Marc Copland: John

By MARK SULLIVAN

Pianist Marc Copland met guitarist John Abercrombie when he first went to New York as an alto saxophonist, playing with him in Chico Hamilton's quartet in 1971. Copland returned to New York as a pianist in the early 1980s, and first recorded with Abercrombie on the album That's For Sure (Challenge, 2001), followed by several others. ...

Luciano Linzi: ripartire dal Festival "CdJ Reloaded"

By PAOLO MARRA

A marzo, durante i momenti peggiori della pandemia, nessun avrebbe scommesso sulla ripresa nel breve termine della programmazione dei festival jazz. Un percorso arduo e non privo di incognite affrontato—come nel caso della rassegna “Casa del Jazz Reloaded" prodotto dalla Fondazione Musica per Roma —con decisione, organizzazione e una buona dose di ottimismo. Il ...

Steve Khan: A Rich Discography and A Priceless Left Hand

By JIM WORSLEY

The life and times of guitarist extraordinaire Steve Khan stretch through a high volume of evolving chapters that fuse together like the passages of a finely crafted arrangement. An expansive conversation with Khan touched on a variety of memories. Still, this is perhaps the Reader's Digest version of the seventy-three years old musician and composer's remarkable ...

Gustav Broman - Albin Vesterberg: Ballader

By JEROME WILSON

Bassist Gustav Broman and guitarist Albin Vesterberg are two young Swedish musicians who have been playing together for several years. This CD, a set of intriguing ballad variations, marks the first recorded evidence of their partnership. It shows them to be talented players who work very well together. The original compositions all use the ...

Wolfgang Muthspiel at Porgy & Bess: Live at Last!

By FRIEDRICH KUNZMANN

Wolfgang Muthspiel Porgy & Bess Vienna May 30, 2020 Originally, all events at the Porgy & Bess jazz club in Vienna had been cancelled for public attendance until the end of August—out of precaution in light of the Coronavirus. In adaption to the horrendous circumstances for any cultural lieu of gathering, ...

Jazz from Europe on ECM (1972 - 1976)

By RUSSELL PERRY

Previously in this series we have surveyed record labels as representative of the jazz trends in their times—for example bebop on Dial in the 40s, mainstream jazz on Verve in the 50s, and hard bop on Blue Note in the 60s. The German label ECM can be seen as representative of a major trend of the ...

Isabelle Olivier / Rez Abassi: OASIS

By JEROME WILSON

The combination of acoustic guitar and harp is seldom heard in jazz and improvisational circles but it is explored here in exciting fashion by harpist Isabelle Olivier and guitarist Rez Abbasi. Accompanied by Prabhu Edouard on tabla and David Paycha on drums, they bring their instruments' sounds together in a variety of musical textures ranging from ...

March Birthdays

By MARC COHN

March birthdays this week on G&M! And some big ones too! Celebrating 90th birthdays: Ornette Coleman, Blue Mitchell and Tommy Flanagan. Celebrating 80th birthdays: Al Jarreau as well as Lew Tabackin, Ralph Towner and Astrud Gilberto} (the latter 3 still with us). Also, among the living, {{m: Wolfgang Muthspiel, Jessica Williams and Ralph Alessi. And, wherever ...

Wolfgang Muthspiel: Continuing The Dream

By R.J. DELUKE

Jazz has always traveled. It finds inquisitive musicians all over the globe, where often, people outside the U.S. receive the message more readily than those in the country where it was born. Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel was already improvising with his older brother, for fun, in the time leading up to his discovery of the art ...