美国国家公共电台 NPR Ralph Towner: An Old Hand With A 'Foolish Heart' (And An Unmatched Style)

 

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Ralph Towner made a name for himself nearly 50 years ago as a member of the Paul Winter Consort¹. Towner plays the guitar. He composed, perhaps, the Consort's best-known tune².

(SOUNDBITE OF PAUL WINTER CONSORT SONG "ICARUS")

KELLY: "Icarus" was so well liked, the Apollo 15 astronauts took it to the moon. Today Ralph Towner is in his late 70s, still going strong. Here's NPR's Tom Cole on Towner's latest solo record and a group recording³ on the way.

TOM COLE, BYLINE⁴: Ralph Towner is best known today as an acoustic⁵ guitarist, but he grew up a piano prodigy⁶ in a small town in western Washington state.

RALPH TOWNER: Nobody knew what to do with me. Had I lived in the East Coast, I think I might have been immediately sent to a music school very early. But as it was, I had a sort of simplistic childhood kind of Norman Rockwell style.

COLE: Bucolic⁷ with a soundtrack. His father played trumpet⁸, and his mother was a piano teacher.

TOWNER: I would go to this old piano that we had. In the beginning, I used to just hold down the pedal and hit something and let it ring. And I remember just being enthralled⁹ with hearing this chord sustain and then slowly disappear.

GARY PEACOCK: He already came into this life with a level of talent that many people don't have.

COLE: Gary Peacock knows from prodigies¹⁰. He's Keith Jarrett's bass¹¹ player, a composer in his own right and a longtime collaborator¹² of Towner's. He says the latter has a talent few possess.

PEACOCK: Ralph has incredible ears. I remember on a tour one time, I walked into his dressing¹³ room just to see if everything's OK and blah, blah, blah. And he's playing three notes on his guitar over and over again. And then maybe adding something over and over and over. It's like anybody walking by would think, what is he doing? What he's doing is listening - listening to what is there and now what comes next.

(SOUNDBITE OF GARY PEACOCK AND RALPH TOWNER SONG, "TRAMONTO")

COLE: Ralph Towner began playing piano when he was three. He took up trumpet two years later, yet he wound up at the University of Washington studying art before switching to music composition. It was there that he first heard a record by a musician who had become one of his biggest influences - pianist Bill Evans and his legendary¹⁴ trio.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL EVANS SONG, "MY FOOLISH HEART")

TOWNER: I always wanted to record "My Foolish Heart." It's one of the first tunes¹⁵ I'd heard that combination of Evans, Lafaro and Paul Motion play. So that tune had a lot of meaning for me and was very important for me at least starting out as a jazz musician.

COLE: Towner finally recorded it for his latest album.

(SOUNDBITE OF RALPH TOWNER SONG, "MY FOOLISH HEART")

COLE: It was also in college that Towner first heard a classical guitar.

TOWNER: I never was really attracted to the guitar until I heard a classical guitar. For me, it's like a small piano and what you can do with it in terms of moving secondary voices around in your music. And you could play all of these notes with all the fingers of your right hand.

COLE: Towners developed an instantly recognizable style, one that seems to involve playing all of those notes with all ten fingers of both hands, playing melody, harmony and rhythm almost simultaneously¹⁶.

(SOUNDBITE OF RALPH TOWNER SONG, "DOLOMITI DANCE")

PAUL MCCANDLESS: You hear the bass. You hear the chords. You hear the melody. And the illusion is created that there's a whole ensemble¹⁷ playing - a whole world that he creates just with a guitar.

COLE: Woodwind player Paul McCandless has been collaborating¹⁸ with Towner for nearly half a century - first, in the Paul Winter Consort and then in the group that split off from the Consort, Oregon.

(SOUNDBITE OF OREGON SONG, "CANYON¹⁹ SONG")

COLE: Ralph Towner has been Oregon's primary composer since the beginning, and the classically trained McCandless says there's a reason.

MCCANDLESS: These pieces that Ralph created - I always say that if you changed one note, it wouldn't be as good, in some ways, the way Mozart and his music are irreducible. And I think that Ralph's gift for melody and singable (ph) melodies really transport the listener to another world.

(SOUNDBITE OF RALPH TOWNER SONG, "CLARION²⁰ CALL")

TOWNER: Each piece is like a little story. It's like a little world into itself. And once you start writing a piece, the first few sounds that you make you can project it into a complete story. You sort of create a little history out of the first few germs of an idea.

COLE: Towner just turned 77. And the history behind his latest album brings that tune he heard Bill Evans play all those years ago, "My Foolish Heart," up to the present.

TOWNER: There's a little irony²¹ in it since I just had a pacemaker put in about two years ago. We had a concert in Germany, and I fell on my face on the first sound check. So I had to go to the hospital. I'd kind of blacked out. Turns out that my heart was beating so slow, and so I called the whole CD "My Foolish Heart." I hope it's over its foolishness.

COLE: So do his fans. Tom Cole, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF RALPH TOWNER SONG, "MY FOOLISH HEART")

1 consort   

v.相伴；结交

参考例句：

• They went in consort two or three together.他们三三两两结伴前往。
• The nurses are instructed not to consort with their patients.护士得到指示不得与病人交往。

2 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

3 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 acoustic   

adj.听觉的，声音的；(乐器)原声的

参考例句：

• The hall has a fine acoustic.这个大厅的传音效果很好。
• Animals use a whole rang of acoustic, visual,and chemical signals in their systems of communication.动物利用各种各样的听觉、视觉和化学信号来进行交流。

6 prodigy   

n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆

参考例句：

• She was a child prodigy on the violin.她是神童小提琴手。
• He was always a Negro prodigy who played barbarously and wonderfully.他始终是一个黑人的奇才，这种奇才弹奏起来粗野而惊人。

7 bucolic   

adj.乡村的；牧羊的

参考例句：

• It is a bucolic refuge in the midst of a great bustling city.它是处在繁华的大城市之中的世外桃源。
• She turns into a sweet country girl surrounded by family,chickens and a bucolic landscape.她变成了被家人、鸡与乡村景象所围绕的甜美乡村姑娘。

8 trumpet   

n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘

参考例句：

• He plays the violin, but I play the trumpet.他拉提琴，我吹喇叭。
• The trumpet sounded for battle.战斗的号角吹响了。

9 enthralled   

迷住，吸引住( enthrall的过去式和过去分词 )； 使感到非常愉快

参考例句：

• The child watched, enthralled by the bright moving images. 这孩子看着那明亮的移动的影像，被迷住了。
• The children listened enthralled as the storyteller unfolded her tale. 讲故事的人一步步展开故事情节，孩子们都听得入迷了。

10 prodigies   

n.奇才，天才（尤指神童）( prodigy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• It'seldom happened that a third party ever witnessed any of these prodigies. 这类壮举发生的时候，难得有第三者在场目睹过。 来自辞典例句
• She is by no means inferior to other prodigies. 她绝不是不如其他神童。 来自互联网

11 bass   

n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴

参考例句：

• He answered my question in a surprisingly deep bass.他用一种低得出奇的声音回答我的问题。
• The bass was to give a concert in the park.那位男低音歌唱家将在公园中举行音乐会。

12 collaborator   

n.合作者，协作者

参考例句：

• I need a collaborator to help me. 我需要个人跟我合作，帮我的忙。
• His collaborator, Hooke, was of a different opinion. 他的合作者霍克持有不同的看法。

13 dressing   

n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料

参考例句：

• Don't spend such a lot of time in dressing yourself.别花那么多时间来打扮自己。
• The children enjoy dressing up in mother's old clothes.孩子们喜欢穿上妈妈旧时的衣服玩。

14 legendary   

adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学）

参考例句：

• Legendary stories are passed down from parents to children.传奇故事是由父母传给孩子们的。
• Odysseus was a legendary Greek hero.奥狄修斯是传说中的希腊英雄。

15 tunes   

n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调

参考例句：

• a potpourri of tunes 乐曲集锦
• When things get a bit too much, she simply tunes out temporarily. 碰到事情太棘手时，她干脆暂时撒手不管。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 simultaneously   

adv.同时发生地，同时进行地

参考例句：

• The radar beam can track a number of targets almost simultaneously.雷达波几乎可以同时追着多个目标。
• The Windows allow a computer user to execute multiple programs simultaneously.Windows允许计算机用户同时运行多个程序。

17 ensemble   

n.合奏(唱)组；全套服装；整体，总效果

参考例句：

• We should consider the buildings as an ensemble.我们应把那些建筑物视作一个整体。
• It is ensemble music for up to about ten players,with one player to a part.它是最多十人演奏的合奏音乐，每人担任一部分。

18 collaborating   

合作( collaborate的现在分词 )； 勾结叛国

参考例句：

• Joe is collaborating on the work with a friend. 乔正与一位朋友合作做那件工作。
• He was not only learning from but also collaborating with Joseph Thomson. 他不仅是在跟约瑟福？汤姆逊学习，而且也是在和他合作。

19 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

20 clarion   

n.尖音小号声；尖音小号

参考例句：

• Clarion calls to liberation had been mocked when we stood by.当我们袖手旁观的时候，自由解放的号角声遭到了嘲弄。
• To all the people present,his speech is a clarion call.对所有在场的人而言，他的演讲都是动人的号召。

21 irony   

n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄

参考例句：

• She said to him with slight irony.她略带嘲讽地对他说。
• In her voice we could sense a certain tinge of irony.从她的声音里我们可以感到某种讥讽的意味。