ECM Special IX: Ralph Towner

For the ninth installment in its 1970s ECM Special series, Trio Records in Japan presented its second of three artist spotlights, this time devoted to Ralph Towner, whose guitars have long served as measuring instruments for ECM’s most elusive cartographic spaces. The compilation begins where many listeners would instinctively begin, with “Icarus,” his most enduring composition, presented here in the version from Matchbook, his duo album with Gary Burton. Its melodic intelligence never advertises itself as cleverness. The tune gathers its lyric weight by degrees, enlarging its private glow with intimate attention to detail. One may still argue that the more definitive version appeared on Diary, and that album is represented here by “Erg,” a piece in which Towner turns the guitar into a small percussive cosmos. Through fingered attack and body-struck resonance, he draws out a molecular energy. Among Towner’s early collaborations, Dis with Jan Garbarek remains one of the most luminous.…