Ralph Towner
Lost And Found

Sometimes you find yourself in a tangle that you don't understand, caught as you are in a noose of events, emotions, and immotions that you believe you can no longer unravel. It's as if the thin thread of your thoughts slowly rises, seeks your throat, and begins to tighten, slowly. Right away, you can't breathe, and you slowly feel like you're dying, slowly, while alive. You gasp cyanotically with your hunger for air and rebirth, as you grow even more livid in the purple of sin and the red of a fierce and stifled anger for not knowing how to live anymore. Then suddenly you realize that this knot that is slowly killing you, this knot that you are unable to untie, you could very well cut. Cleanly. A Gordian knot from which you free yourself for no reason, just as for no reason you were about to die hanging from the gallows of the unwritten condemnation of depression, of the true death in life.

In this CD by Ralph Towner, there's the whole sense of losing and finding oneself. This is very profound jazz. But it's also very clear music. Where even if you reach the depths of an abyss, you still see the bottom. A bottom rich and colorful, red corals of sensations, all beautiful. An album where the guitar caresses all the inner atmospheres of man, all his immotions. There's the skillful touch, now Latin now classical, of Towner's splendid guitar. There's the bass now hypnotic now meditative now furious of Marc Johnson. There's the light and crackling drums of Jon Christensen, and there’s the discreet and whispered lyricism of Denney Goodhew's saxophone.

This CD is a strange blend of sensations "on the skin". Like when you cry and laugh at the same time without knowing why. Sadness, mixed with regret, in the long and shadowy double bass solo of "Col Legno". Or the lucid and impalpable introspection of Towner's pizzicato that adorns the entire "Summer's End". From the desperate and powerful poetry of "Soft Landing", to the Be-Bop echoes of "Flying Cows", up to the dark and Mediterranean lyricism of "A Breath Away". In a crescendo that reaches its peak in the hoarse and choked cry of "Midnight Blue ... Red Shift", where that thread of thoughts returns again to tighten around your throat in a sleep that will not come, lost in another "Moonless" night. But suddenly this knot unties, and you find yourself immersed in a different atmosphere, of precious and tranquil joy, a joy that feeds on life like a precious and sunny sap. And then you don't cry anymore. But your eyes are still shiny. Eyes clearer, deeper, that see better in yourself and others. And these are the eyes you find while listening to the exotic and fiery rhythms of "Tattler" but especially the concluding "Taxi's Waiting". Because the taxi that could have taken you away from your sadness was right there in front of you, simply.

And happiness, like beauty, is really very simple.

Everyone understands it, without the need for many words.