Ralph Towner (ECM PRO-E-2020)

This 1983 promotional album surveys the work of one of ECM’s most enduring and quietly formative artists: Ralph Towner. Having by this point recorded for the label for nearly a decade, his presence had already defined an aesthetic in which every note appeared to have crossed a considerable interior distance before reaching the ear. This rare vinyl offers a compressed map of an imagination folding vast musical territories into the small, resonant body of a guitar. Side One is devoted to Blue Sun (ECM 1250), presenting four of the album’s seven tracks. On that recording, Towner performs on guitar, piano, Prophet-5 synthesizer, French horn, cornet, and percussion, gathering an entire private ensemble around himself. His solo compositions already contain such harmonic density that the additional instruments often seem to externalize voices embedded within the guitar itself. In “The Prince And The Sage” and “Wedding Of The Streams,” the intimate plucking hovers before the listener with…