Virtuoso musician and composer who was at the forefront of 1970s jazz fusion, notably with the band Oregon
For a quiet man, Ralph Towner, the American multi-instrumentalist and composer, who has died aged 85, had an impressive penchant for sharp epithets about his own creative motives.
Describing himself as a “raconteur of the abstract” was a memorable one. So was his remark in 2023, to Premier Guitar magazine, that throughout his career he felt he had generally been “more obsessive than I’ve been curious”.
