Track Listing

1. Pendant
2. Oleander Etude
3. Always By Your Side
4. Hollows
5. Anniversary Song
6. If
7. Five Glimpses
8. Five Glimpses
9. Five Glimpses
10. Five Glimpses
11. Five Glimpses
12. Lizards Of Eraclea
13. Turning Of The Leaves
14. Come Rain Or Shine
15. Freeze Frame
16. My Man's Gone Now

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124840 in Music
• Released on: 2006-03-27
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds
• Running time: 44 minutes

From the Label
Excluding his various collaborations with such fellow masters as Jan Garbarek, Keith Jarrett and Kenny Wheeler, the solo Time Line is the twenty-first album by guitarist and pianist Ralph Towner on ECM. It is a particularly distinguished addition to an already impressive discography. In one way, the near-forty-five minutes of this beautifully programmed music, superbly recorded in Austria’s Propstei St Gerold, take us all the way back to the 1973 Diary. This was the haunting solo album with which, following a guest appearance on Weather Report’s I Sing The Body Electric release, Towner first made the world fully aware of the freshly turned breadth and depth of the essentially poetic qualities he was able to project on both solo classical and twelve-string guitar. From another perspective, Time Line serves richly satisfying notice of the ever-deepening maturity of approach which Towner has sought, and attained, over the years. Everything about the playing here - the dynamics of touch and tone, the spaciously cast sense of rhythmic attack, melodic continuity and harmonic nuance has Towner’s customary trademark excellence to it. However, such excellence is deployed within what is perhaps the most fully rounded and attractive programme of any solo Towner release to date. This ranges from the pensive reveries of the opening "Pendant" to the rippling drama of "The Lizards"; from the magically stilled, Zen-like miniatures of "Five Glimpses" to the fully weighted and resonant harmonies of Harold Arlen’s "Come Rain Or Shine" and Gershwin’s "My Man’s Gone Now" (the last, one of the two tracks which feature the twelve-string guitar). If I had to recommend only one Towner solo album, this excellent release would be it. --Michael Tucker