Oregon (band)
Oregon is a quartet founded in the USA in 1971 that plays jazz , world music and new improvisation music with a chamber music stance .
history
The origins of the Oregon group go back to the second half of the 1960s. Ralph Towner and Glen Moore , who knew each other from studying at the University of Oregon , performed in Portland for five months in 1968. 1969 - according to (false) legend, they first met at the legendary Woodstock Festival - Collin Walcott joined them. 1970 came Paul McCandless , with whom Walcott and Towner played together in the Paul Winter Consort until 1972 , to the first recordings (which were initially not published). Thus the regular line-up of the quartet was found, which had performed under the name Oregon since July 1971 at McCandless' suggestion .
Up until 1980 the quartet toured a lot (initially mainly in clubs) and also played in Europe. During that time, the group's playing did not develop uniformly, but served a whole range of jazz styles.
In 1980 the group took a creative break, only to be back on stage a year later with a new sound. With its electronic elements, this sound was contemporary in the 1980s. The changed group sound is mainly due to Ralph Towner and his newly discovered passion for the keyboard, but also partly to the aesthetics of the ECM producer Manfred Eicher .
In 1984, Collin Walcott died in a car accident. After the group decided to move on, Trilok Gurtu sat on drums for the next several years in 1985 . The studio album Beyond Words 1995 recorded the three musicians (Towner, Moore and McCandless) then alone. A year later, Mark Walker joined as the fourth musician , initially only for a few pieces. In the spring of 2015, Moore separated from Oregon in order to have more time for his own music and his family.
Members
- Ralph Towner - guitar, keyboard
- Paul McCandless - wind instruments
- Glen Moore - double bass (until spring 2015)
- Collin Walcott († 1984) - percussion, sitar
- Trilok Gurtu - percussion (in the meantime)
- Arto Tunçboyacıyan - percussion (in the meantime)
- Paolino Dalla Porta - Bass (from 2015)
- Mark Walker - drums (from 1996)
Discography
- 1972 - Music of Another Present Era
- 1973 - Distant Hills
- 1974 - Winter Light
- 1975 - In concert
- 1976 - Together (with Elvin Jones )
- 1977 - Friends
- 1978 - violin (with Zbigniew Seifert )
- 1978 - Out of the Woods
- 1979 - Moon and Mind
- 1979 - Roots in the Sky
- 1980 - in performance
- 1980 - Our First Record (rec. 1970, ed. 1980)
- 1983 - Oregon
- 1985 - Crossing
- 1987 - Ecotopia
- 1989 - 45th parallel
- 1992 - Always, Never and Forever
- 1995 - Beyond Words
- 1995 - Troika
- 1997 - Northwest Passage
- 1998 - Music for a Midsummer Night's Dream
- 2000 - In Moscow with the Moscow Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.
- 2002 - Live at Yoshi’s
- 2005 - Prime
- 2007 - 1000 kilometers
- 2007 - Vanguard Visionaries
- 2010 - In Stride
- 2012 - Family Tree
- 2016 - Live in New Orleans (rec. 1978, ed. 2016)
- 2017 - Lantern
Web links
- Homepage
- Interview with Ralph Towner (2017)
- Discography
- Oregon at Allmusic (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Liner Notes for Oregon Live in New Orleans