Ralph Towner, At First Light, ECM ***1/2

A cleansing exactitude is one reaction to At First Light. Another is the feeling of a craftsman at work in complete command of the classical guitar on this studio recording made in Lugano last year. Ralph Towner needs no introductions to ECM fans …

Published: 2 Mar 2023. Updated: 14 months.

A cleansing exactitude is one reaction to At First Light. Another is the feeling of a craftsman at work in complete command of the classical guitar on this studio recording made in Lugano last year.

Ralph Towner needs no introductions to ECM fans given his long tenure on the label stretching all the way back to Diary a half century ago. And while solo guitar albums aren't everyone's cup of tea - and certainly not ours - nevertheless it is hard to resist such musicianship and evergreens as eternally giving as 'Make Someone Happy' and Irish tune 'Danny Boy,' the latter doubly fitting given that the album is released this month on St Patrick's Day. The title track is one of a number of Towner originals of which the deftly chugging 'Fat Foot' exerts its siren call most of all.

'Flow,' the opening track, from At First Light is streaming. Ralph Towner photo: Caterina Di Perri/ECM

  • MORE READING:

Ralph Towner / Wolfgang Muthspiel / Slava Grigoryan's Travel Guide reviewed in 2013

Ralph Towner/John Abercrombie's Five Years Later reviewed in 2014

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Ivan Blomqvist, Bror, Jazzland ***1/2

Meaning ''brother'' in English Bror is yet another album that by its outcome if not (who knows?) its intention trying and largely succeeding in rewriting the jazztronica landscape via legato dreaminess, an impressionist sensibility shaped around …

Published: 1 Mar 2023. Updated: 14 months.

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Meaning ''brother'' in English Bror is yet another album that by its outcome if not (who knows?) its intention trying and largely succeeding in rewriting the jazztronica landscape via legato dreaminess, an impressionist sensibility shaped around synth and piano textures and so much more. The writing by the Swedish musician and main brain here Ivan Blomqvist is extraordinary in the way it can dovetail and morph into any number of parallel runnings whether downtempo dancefloor, long form post-Gil Evans dream jazz, subtle modalities, and on and on - ever adaptable and yet not dumbing down in the process. Tunes, pervasively haunting ('Jonas' is the most moving) are by Blomqvist and that is the main focus: he plays piano and synths and also on the record are reedist Karl Nyberg, strings and a brass section that includes trombone, trumpet and the tuba of Daniel Herskedal. Warm and reflective with that quintessential far away Nordic melancholia on tap this is not an album about swingmatism and there is nary a nod to bebop in the whole entity and yet it connects with say the way Floating Points united with Pharoah Sanders on Promises or going back further the ''futurejazz'' of Nils Petter Molvær in the 1990s on the classic, Khmer. In a sense you can feel how the seeds sown by NPM are now in full bloom. But however you frame it Bror is a vision that does not come along every day. Out on Friday - 'Jonas' is streaming.

Ivan Blomqvist photo: ivanblomqvist.com