Ralph Towner

My Foolish Heart brings Ralph Towner back to unaccompanied guitar, the setting where his voice is most exposed and most recognisable. It follows two collaborations, Chiaroscuro with trumpeter Paolo Fresu and Travel Guide with fellow guitarists Wolfgang Muthspiel and Slava Grigoryan. Solo playing runs through his long ECM catalogue, from Diary and Solo Concert to Ana, Anthem and Time Line, and this set of twelve short pieces takes its place in that line.

Towner recorded the album in February 2016 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, a few weeks before his 76th birthday. Stefano Amerio was the engineer and Manfred Eicher produced. Towner plays classical guitar on most tracks and switches to the steel-strung 12-string for two, Clarion Call and Biding Time. Eleven of the pieces are his own. Two of them, Shard and Rewind, come from the songbook of Oregon, the band he has recorded with alongside his solo work, and Rewind closes the programme.

The only standard is the title track, the Victor Young and Ned Washington song that Towner first loved in the recording by the Bill Evans trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. In his liner note he says that version "set me on a course to try to attain the magic of this trio in my own attempts." He plays it with great virtuosity but no display. Blue as in Bley is dedicated to the pianist Paul Bley, who had died shortly before the session, and it is one of the most intricate pieces here. Clarion Call sets low bass figures against bright, high phrases, so that one guitar sounds almost like two players in duet. The opener, Pilgrim, has a formal, slightly Elizabethan melody.

The album was well received. In The Independent, Andy Gill called it possibly "Towner's best since his sublime 1973 debut 'Diary'." Peter Bacon of London Jazz News wrote in April 2017 of "a gorgeous album of solo guitar, his touch and sound absolutely unmistakeable." Matt Collar at AllMusic singled out the bittersweet ballad I'll Sing to You, and ECM Reviews praised the tactile close-up sound, which lets every movement of the fingers on the strings come through.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2516, first released on 3 February 2017, with a booklet carrying Towner's notes in English.