Ralph Towner RALPH TOWNER (1940) came to the jazz and contemporary music worlds in the late 1960s, developing his unique virtuosic style alongside other emerging musical artists such as John McLaughlin, Dave Holland, John Abercrombie, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, and Marc Copland. Audiences of the 1960s and 70s witnessed great changes in jazz genres and composed concert music from the diverse worlds of establi shed uptown circles to newly emerging musical cultures of the downtown scene. Within the advent of new post-modern conceptual arts, multi-media, and rock music, modern jazz artists such as Towner found their fresh, eclectic voices in lower Manhattan and the New York loft scene. �Classic jazz� was still to be found in the small clubs while unique fusions of acoustic and electric musics began to fill auditoriums worldwide. The so-called �modern jazz� of the 1970s, in all of its manifestations, was alive and well�and at once popular and innovative�as artists drew from their explorato...
