Silence Of A Candle


Very sad news about the death of Ralph Towner at the age of 85. Understandably most tributes have focused on his career as a solo guitarist. But his ensemble work also demands celebration. This included his work with the underrated Paul Winter Consort. This resulted in the 1972 album Icarus produced by George Martin.on which Towner classic's The Silence of a Candle and Icarus debuted. The moonlighting Beatles producer described the album as 'the finest album I ever made' in his memoir All You Need is Ears, which is quite remarkable coming from the person responsible for Sgt Pepper.

In 1971 Ralph Towner was a founding member of the ensemble Oregon with Consort bandmates Collin Walcott and Paul McCandless, who were joined by Glen Moore on bass. Oregon never received the attention they deserved, simply because their adventurous and innovative music was impossible to fit into any of the music industry's meaningless genres. As bassist Glen Moore explained "We had a great deal of trouble finding the bin that they would put us into. The most terrible label we had glued onto us was the genre of world music - or new age music - which they gave to anything that there wasn't a name for".

Following Collin Walcott's tragic death in a tour road crash in 1984 Oregon continued with Ralph Towner in its lineup. But although this produced some pleasant-sounding albums, the spark of innovation and risk that had defined Oregon in its original incarnation. Fortunately however Ralph Towner's parallel solo career, largely with ECM, allowed his genius as a solo artist to flourish.

In these deeply troubled times I leave you with Ralph Towner's lyrics for The Silence of a Candle as he sung them on that ground-breaking 1972 album Icarus. 

Two hands split 
Two hands humans 
Humans making humans 
Mountains maybe we can move them 
Come now together we can do this... 

Come on light the candle 
Then curse the darkness 
Then curse the darkness
 Come on light the candle 
Then curse the darkness 
Then curse the darkness

RIP Ralph Towner

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