Artist: Ralph Towner
Album: At First Light (ECM)
Apart from a solo career that began back in the early 1970s, nylon-string guitarist Ralph Towner has contributed to recordings from a wide range of artists, including Bill Bruford, Robben Ford and Weather Report. He also has the distinction of having had two craters on the moon named after his compositions, by the Apollo 15 astronauts. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, having begun his musical journey playing brass instruments before teaching himself to play piano, but it was to be the guitar that formed the main focus of his music.
His latest album, At First Light, finds him playing solo nylon-string guitar on a collection of new pieces, plus jazz standards by Hoagy Carmichael and Jule Styne as well as a reading of the traditional song, Danny Boy.
You started off as a pianist, didn’t you?
“Yeah, I had heard the Bill Evans trio and I wanted to know how it felt to play the piano like that. He was my model for the first few years, so I’m basically self-taught in
