Historic summit meetings this weekend – Gary Burton and Ralph Towner, live at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia on June 30, 1989.
The Burton/Towner collaboration was one of those once-each-year get togethers that those in the audience who managed to get there, were treated to an unforgettable experience.
The summit meeting basically got rolling in 1974 when ECM released Matchbook, the first encounter in the studio between these two giants.
That Towner/Burton summit left indelible marks of grace and humility, each a brighter spark at the wick of our attention. The sound of this unique pairing is like no other and unfolds itself with the delicacy of a morning glory, yet with melodies as indestructible as the sunlight that sustains them. Its many colors are provided not only through finely wrought melodies, but also through a wealth of rhythmic variations throughout. If you like either of these artists apart, then you can’t go wrong with them together.
Gary Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the prevailing two-mallet technique. This approach caused him to be heralded as an innovator, and his sound and technique are widely imitated. He is also known for pioneering fusion jazz and popularizing the duet format in jazz, as well as being a major figure in music education from his 30 years teaching at the Berklee College of Music.
Ralph Towner plays only acoustic guitars, using six-string nylon-string and 12-string steel-string guitars. As a result, he tends to avoid high-volume musical environments, preferring small groups of mostly acoustic instruments that emphasize dynamics and group interplay. Towner obtains a percussive effect (e.g., “Donkey Jamboree” from Slide Show with Gary Burton) from the guitar by weaving a matchbook among the strings at the neck of the instrument. Both with Oregon and as a solo artist, Towner has made use of overdubbing, allowing him to play piano (or synthesizer) and guitar on the same track; his most notable use of the technique came on his 1974 album Diary, in which he plays guitar-piano duets with himself on most of the album’s eight tracks. In the 1980s, Towner began using the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 synthesizer extensively,[10] but has since de-emphasized his synthesizer and piano playing in favor of guitar.
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