Ecm Records
2001
Anthem
About This Album
On this solo recording, Ralph Towner returns to the elementary sounds of his classical and 12-string guitars for inspiration. Though an accomplished pianist, French horn, and trumpet player, Towner has left all of them out of Anthem's stark mix. And it's a good thing too. There was a time when his love of the Prophet V synthesizer and his piano improvisations covered over the gracefulness of his trademark signature on the guitar. Anthem begins with "Solitary Woman," for 12-string. It's based on modal intervals and harmonics. His sense of drama in the piece is remarkable; coming from a melodic framework and building an architecture of trills and single-string runs, he then evolves the piece into a chordal spiral, where semitones fall off in rows until only the melody remains -- skeletal, icy, crystalline. On the title track, he uses the classical guitar to create a riff-based structure, adding one element and then another, quoting from "Greensleeves" in one section until he has harmonically changed the entire structure of the tune's body, creating an almost Renaissance melody from its framework. Anthem reveals Towner in the role of being a composer for the guitar rather than of music.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,6 and 17)

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