Ralph Towner

Ana is a solo guitar album by Ralph Towner, recorded in 1996 and released in 1997 as his 17th album under his own name for ECM. It was his first record of unaccompanied guitar since the live Solo Concert of 1979. Blue Sun (1982), though credited to him alone, had been multi-tracked with Towner on several instruments. The programme falls in two halves: seven pieces on classical guitar, then Seven Pieces for Twelve Strings, a suite of short movements on the 12-string.

Towner recorded it in March 1996 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug engineering and Manfred Eicher producing. The album marked twenty-five years of that partnership. Eicher first heard him in 1971 at The Space, a church venue in New York, and the following year they recorded Trios/Solos. By the time of Ana Towner had made three further ECM albums with Oregon, the group he had co-founded. All fourteen tracks are his own compositions.

Towner explained to ECM that he uses unusual tunings on the 12-string to reach intervals beyond octaves and unisons. Classical technique, he said, lets him strike punchy unison chords, and ECM's notes compare the result to a harpsichord. He thought of the guitar as a way of suggesting a small orchestra, and he credited Bill Evans as an influence he absorbed through the acoustic instrument. The Reluctant Bride opens the record, and Les Douzilles is the longest piece at almost seven minutes. The suite gathers seven brief pieces, five of them under two minutes. It moves through sketches such as Slavic Mood and two versions of Carib Crib before closing on Sage Brush Rider.

Down Beat wrote that "Towner's music has become one of jazz' strongest, least conventional works in progress". JazzTimes heard "a slender landscape where jazz and classical have successfully met." Towner kept recording for ECM for the rest of his life, many of those albums solo, until his death in Rome on 18 January 2026 at the age of 85.

This is the CD edition, ECM 1611, first released in April 1997, with a cover by Mayo Bucher and photographs by Patrick Hinely.