Sound and Shadows - Ralph Towner

Nov

15

Sound and Shadows - Ralph Towner

≡ Category: 1970s, Avant-Guarde, Recommended, Reviews |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING

Rating:

It’s tough to call what Ralph Towner does jazz, since it has nothing to do with the blues, even tangentially. It kind of exists in it’s own category. One way to describe it is chamber music with improvisation.

Towner likes odd time signatures. For example, the song Distant Hills, which opens the album, is in 11/8.

He also loves dissonance. It is not at all uncommon for him to start a composition with a completely dissonant chord, and then move to another dissonant chord and then another.

But the funny thing is that Ralph Towner doesn’t use dissonance in the way that avant guarde musicians like Anthony Braxton use it. He uses it to undercut any sense of cornyness or nostalgia in his compositions, while muscling it into an unorthodox path to lyricism.

This gives his soloists a distinct challenge. They can’t rely on blues patterns because there is no blues in Ralph Towner’s music. They can’t imply outside harmonies because the harmonies are so abstruse as it is. So they can either find melodies within the modal scales that fit the harmonies or they can complement or contrast the rhythms found within the composition.

This has the effect of placing emphasis on the compositions rather than the soloists.

Distant Hills has a droning, stately, somewhat mournful quality to it. Jan Garbarek elaborates on the melody with his keening tenor sax, rather than simply running scales. Towner himself employs a similar strategy on guitar. A more rhythmic approach is taken by bassist Eberhard Weber, who employs triplets on a major 7th interval at one point to give the effect of an echo.

It’s a beautiful tune. You find yourself going into a trance while listening to it, and the solos kind of flit in and out of your consciousness.

In Balance Beam, Towner begins the tune with an enigmatic rhythmic figure consisting of sustained chords that kind of hang in the air. Then a sprightly melody like an Irish jig breaks in before veering off into a series of dissonant chords.

Interestingly, Garbarek doesn’t solo over the form. Instead, the quartet freely improvises, using the materials from the composition as inspiration.

Along the Way is a 32 bar waltz. The solos are pretty straightforward.

For Arion, Towner switches to piano, although he takes a solo on guitar. Arion has a long winding structure that repeatedly harmonizes a descending figure in various ways. However, the solos don’t follow the form. Instead, Towner composed material specifically for the solo sections, which is kind of unusual, before restating the theme.

Song of the Shadows starts out with Towner stating the theme on solo guitar, taken rubato. Jan Garbarek comes in on flute, while Towner doubletracks harmonies on French Horn. For Jan Garbarek’s solo, Towner and Jon Christensen play freely behind him, Christensen employing a modified march rhythm on the snare drum.

Eventually, Towner introduces a repetitive motif on guitar that takes over the tune. While Garbarek continues to solo, Towner adds accents on French Horn.

Sound and Shadows (released on the ECM label) is all about mood. Really, all the compositions are essentially tone poems. This won’t appeal to everybody, certainly not to post-bop purists, but for what it is, it’s pretty compelling stuff.