CD ECM Records Ralph Towner: My Foolish Heart

2017

Ralph Towner - chitara clasica, double-six

After critically-lauded projects with trumpeter Paolo Fresu (Chiaroscuro) and with fellow guitarists Wolfgang Muthspiel and Slava Grigoryan (Travel Guide), Ralph Towner returns to solo guitar for My Foolish Heart. Whether on classical guitar or 12-string guitar Towner’s touch is immediately identifiable.

Solo music is an important thread through his rich discography and this new album – recorded at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in February 2016 and produced by Manfred Eicher – follows in the great tradition of Diary, Solo Concert, Ana, Anthem, and Time Line. It features finely-honed new compositions as well as a pair of tunes (“Shard” and “Rewind”) from the songbook of Oregon, a dedication to the late Paul Bley (“Blue As In Bley”) and a single standard – Victor Young’s “My Foolish Heart” which Towner first came to love in Bill Evans’s interpretation.

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In his dedication to the acoustic instrument, and his exploration of the borders of both classical and jazz, Ralph Towner is effectively the guitarist equivalent of Keith Jarrett: there’s a calm, reflective quality, allied to an intense involvement, about both players’ solo work, of which ‘My Foolish Heart’ may be Towner’s best since his sublime 1973 debut ‘Diary’.
Andy Gill, The Independent

The mood is beautifully contemplative and the pictures, even all in the mind, are never less than vivid. He makes positive use of space and quietude, occasionally keeping a rhythmic base by weaving around steady chords, and often spinning single-note streams into partita-like structures. A couple pieces here are rendered on steel twelve-string guitar, where its tinnier chiming (with picking and natural sustain somewhat evocative of Leo Kottke) makes a tangy tonal seasoning to complement the subtler twang of nylon. Nonetheless, it's still the classical guitar where he's arguably always been most at home. […] Meditative, lightly jaunty or anywhere in between, each part of ‘My Foolish Heart’ tumbles from the strings with eloquence and heart.
Geno Thackara, All About Jazz