Solstice belongs to the great early production projects of ECM. American guitarist Ralph Towner recorded it in Oslo in December 1974 with three European musicians, in a band put together for the session. It was his first recorded meeting with the label's European players. The result is a quartet with a character all its own, built on Towner's mix of classical guitar technique and jazz improvisation.
Towner plays 12-string guitar, classical guitar and piano. Jan Garbarek plays tenor and soprano saxophone and flute, Eberhard Weber bass and cello, Jon Christensen drums and percussion. The sessions took place at Arne Bendiksen Studio, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. Towner wrote seven of the eight pieces, and Weber contributed the closing Sand. The album came out in September 1975.
Oceanus opens the record at almost eleven minutes. Towner's 12-string rings across the whole stereo field, Christensen keeps the music moving, and Weber's bowed lines run under Garbarek's tenor. Nimbus begins as a 12-string solo with light bass support. It then gathers overdubbed flutes, drums, saxophone and a bowed bass, which Tyran Grillo of ECM Reviews heard crying "with the grating fluidity of a sarangi". Winter Solstice is a quieter duet for classical guitar and saxophone, while Piscean Dance is a brisk exchange between 12-string and drums. On Sand Garbarek plays slow, meditative lines while Christensen's flexatone wavers in the background.
ECM quotes Down Beat: "Solstice inspires through its expressive openness… revealing depth of texture, nuance and meaning." In AllMusic, Michael G. Nastos called the album Towner's crowning achievement as a leader, and Perfect Sound Forever counted it among the moodiest records ECM ever released. The meeting had lasting consequences inside the label. Garbarek and Towner later recorded Dis together, Weber joined the Jan Garbarek Group, and Christensen became the drummer of Weber's band Colours. The quartet itself reconvened for Sound And Shadows in 1977.
This CD edition of ECM 1060, first issued in 1975, was reissued in 2008 in the Touchstones series. ECM launched the series that year to bring key catalogue albums back into circulation in cardboard sleeves.
