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For over three decades OREGON has inspired audiences in renowned concert halls including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, BerlinPhilharmonicHall,
and Vienna’s Mozartsaal; at international jazz clubs and major festivals such as Montreux, Pori, Berlin, Montreal, and NewportJazz; andon tours
throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America, Eastern and Western Europe, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka,Bangladesh,Algeria, and
Australia.
OREGON began in 1960 at the University of Oregon with undergraduate students Ralph Towner and Glen Moore who formed a
musicalfriendshipon bass and pia ...read more
For over three decades OREGON has inspired audiences in renowned concert halls including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, BerlinPhilharmonicHall,
and Vienna’s Mozartsaal; at international jazz clubs and major festivals such as Montreux, Pori, Berlin, Montreal, and NewportJazz; andon tours
throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America, Eastern and Western Europe, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka,Bangladesh,Algeria, and
Australia.
OREGON began in 1960 at the University of Oregon with undergraduate students Ralph Towner and Glen Moore who formed a
musicalfriendshipon bass and piano inspired by Bill Evans and Scott LaFaro and later by Brazilian music. Moore earned a degree in history
andliterature andTowner completed his in composition, taking up guitar in the process. In the mid 60’s, they both traveled to Europe.
Townerstudied classicalguitar in Vienna with Karl Scheit; Moore studied classical bass in Copenhagen and sat in with such greats as Ben Webster
andDexter Gordon. By1969, both were living in New York City, playing with a community of young musicians who formed the great fusion
bandsof the ‘70’s includingWeather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Performing with folksinger Tim Hardin at the ‘69 Woodstock Festival, Towner and Moore encountered two members of the Paul Winter
Consortwhointroduced them to the music of that group. In the studio with Hardin, Ralph and Glen connected with sitar and tabla player
CollinWalcott. He wasa graduate of Indiana University under George Gaber, studied ethnomusicology at UCLA and served as road manager
forRavi Shankar and AllaRakha. On a break at that session, Ralph and Collin played their first guitar/sitar duet in the hallways of
ColumbiaStudios.
By 1970 Ralph, Glen, and Collin had joined the Paul Winter Consort for a 50-concert U.S. tour where they quickly formed an alliance
withitsoboist, Paul McCandless, who had studied at the Manhattan School of Music under Toscanini’s first oboe player, Robert Bloom. During
thatinitialtour, Ralph began composing a new repertoire of original material including “Icarus”, which has since become a standard. The
earlydevelopmentof OREGON took root in motel rooms and college dormitories where in private jam sessions, Towner, Walcott, Moore
andMcCandless beganinvestigating new musical possibilities after getting a taste of collective improvisation on tour with the Consort.
Winter’sgroup introduced them tothe idea of performing concerts with uncommon combinations of instruments in an eclectic variety of
musicalstyles. Incorporating theseelements, OREGON emerged with a unique synthesis of European classical instrumentation, American
jazzharmony, and ethnic influences fromaround the globe. The notion of recording their own music first arose at a party, where Towner
andWalcott were entertaining friends in theirguitar/sitar configuration. The group was offered the use of an 8-track studio in the Hollywood
Hills,known as “The Farm.” A short-livedindependent label in Los Angeles subsidized six weeks of taping and mixing. The company did not
succeedin selling the results to a major labeland the tape went into storage for ten years before its Vanguard release on disc called—Our
FirstRecord.
In 1971 the band made its debut in New York City, calling themselves Thyme—Music of Another Present Era, a phrase designed to
answerthequestion. “ What kind of music do you play?” McCandless later proposed the name “OREGON” alluding to Ralph and
Glen’snostalgicreminiscences of their home state. The next year, Vanguard signed OREGON, recording a new set of original compositions which
becametheband’s debut LP, Music of Another Present Era. In that same period, they made Trios and Solos for ECM, a new label in Europe.
TheVanguardalbum introduced them to their American audience and through their association with ECM, they developed their European
followingwith toursbeginning in 1974 where they received critical acclaim and growing recognition in the international community.
Six years and nine albums later, OREGON moved to Elektra/Asylum Records. Its first release on that label, Out of the Woods, reached
adecidedlywider audience and was included in the 101 Best Jazz Albums list by Len Lyons. As the years spanned and the group’s versatilitygrew,
bassclarinet, soprano and sopranino saxes, ethnic flutes, flugelhorn, French horn, clarinet, dulcimer, electric bass, violin, viola, and amyriad
ofpercussion instruments all found their way into OREGON’s instrumentation which already included Towner’s nylon and 12 stringguitars and
piano,McCandless’ oboe and English horn, Moore’s 1715 Klotz bass and Walcott’s sitar and tablas.
At the end of OREGON’s contract with Elektra, and with the birth of Collin Walcott’s daughter in 1980, the band members took a
yearlongsabbatical during which they pursued their individual solo careers. When they reassembled, OREGON’s unique fusion gained
anelectricdimension through Towner’s addition of keyboard synthesizers. The group recorded two more albums for ECM with the original
personnel.
They had reached a peak of popularity when in November 1984, Walcott died in an auto accident in the former East Germany, leaving
theECMalbum Crossing as his final document. This left OREGON with the seemingly impossible task of filling an enormous vacuum. Theyreunited
for thefirst time in May 1985 at a memorial concert for Walcott in New York where the dazzling Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtujoined them to
paytribute. Trilok, who studied tablas and jazz drumming, accepted an invitation to work with OREGON in 1986 which includeda State
Departmenttour of the Indian subcontinent. Over a five-year period, he played on three albums with the band: Ecotopia on ECM, 45thParallel on
Epic, andAlways, Never, and Forever, the band’s first recording on Intuition. After the departure of Gurtu, the three originalmembers continued
theircreative development as a trio making two CDs—Troika and Beyond Words.
For the 1996 Intuition recording “Northwest Passage”, the group incorporated two masterful percussionists, former Chicagoan Mark
WalkerandArto Tuncboyician of Armenia. Walker, who also performs and records with Cuban expatriate Paquito D’Rivera, has become the
newfourthmember of OREGON and together with Towner, Moore, and McCandless traveled to Moscow in June 1999 to record the double CD
forIntuitionentitled “Oregon In Moscow.” This project is the band’s debut recording of their orchestral repertoire. Developing since the
WinterConsort days,this prodigious body of work had been performed with the St. Paul, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Stavanger, Freiburg,
andStuttgart Orchestras, butnever documented. Oregon In Moscow, produced by Steve Rodby of the Pat Metheny Group fame, features the
bandmembers as composers,orchestrators, and soloists in collaboration with the Moscow Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra. In 2001 this
albumgarnered four Grammynominations. OREGON’s most recent production, a live CD recorded during a spirited week at Yoshi’s, San
FranciscoBay Area’s premier jazz club,was released in 2002. Not since 1980 has the group’s electrifying and poignant performances been
captured ontape.
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