Trivia

An American composer and multi-instrumentalist.

Joined world music pioneer Paul Winter's "Consort" ensemble in the late 1960s.

Mother was a piano teacher and his father a trumpet player.

Along with bandmates Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, and Collin Walcott, Towner left the Winter Consort in 1970 to form the group Oregon, which over the course of the 1970s issued a number of influential records mixing folk music, Indian classical forms, and avant-garde jazz-influenced free improvisation.

Studied classical guitar at the Vienna Academy of Music with Karl Scheit from 1963 to 1964 and 1967-68.

Learned to improvise on the piano at the age of three.

Multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He played the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion, trumpet, and French horn.

Began his career as a conservatory-trained classical pianist, attending the University of Oregon from 1958 to 1963, where he also studied composition with Homer Keller.

Two lunar craters were named by the Apollo 15 astronauts after two of Towner's compositions, "Icarus" and "Ghost Beads.".

First played jazz in New York City in the late 1960s as a pianist and was strongly influenced by the renowned jazz pianist Bill Evans.

Appeared as a sideman on Weather Report's 1972 album I Sing the Body Electric.