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Biography
ALAN
TOWER
the power of organic world music to inspire, educate, and serve social
change efforts
For many years I was entranced with writing for solo acoustic guitar
with Leo Kottke, Alex deGrassi and Michael Hedges as inspiration or
mentors. In the early 90’s, experimenting with a new technique,
I injured my hand so severely I was not able to play for many years,
and now only for short periods. However, this was a gift, as I became
interested in the huaca(triple chambered clay vessel flute), then the
didjeridu and most recently the fujara(from Slovakia). These instruments
are all earth based -made from clay, wood or agave cactus and provide
a natural connection to my work as an environmental activist. The instruments
are also based on, or directly from, non-western cultures. At this point
the intersection of music, activism and world cultural became complete,
without a previous plan to integrate these together. In bringing the
western compositional approach/techniques used in writing for solo guitar
to these new instruments, I discovered that there was a wide world open
to me in pushing the instruments beyond their current boundaries.
Since becoming sensitized to the current environmental crisis through
the work of Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, my vision of music has been
as a voice and catalyst for a more humane sustainable society. In 2002
I launched Octave Alliance, a musical venture to promote work in this
area. Projects undertaken by OA are the Music and Nature in Concert
series out in coastal gun batteries - transforming former places of
war to transcendent sound and word. Also NOVAM, a national database
linking musicians and activist non-profits for mutual benefit.
My compositions and unusual sounds have been used in a series of Tsunami
Ranger video’s on Sea Kayaking, in the Ellipsis Arts CD/book Orbitones,
Spoonharps and Bellowphones, in the 2004 Disney/Skywalker movie Peter
Pan and in soundtracks for meditation and yoga. I perform solo, in duo
and with Ancient Future - organic trance trio - around the san francisco
bay area.
The music of Alan Tower is all tracings. Like the bards of ancient times
he holds up the mirror of our follies. But he also holds up stars and
mists and fleeting lights that trace hidden paths out of the darkness.
He is a composer of dreams and a gentle artisan of hope.
- Miriam Teresa McGillis O.P. Founder Genesis Farm Lecturer, Fate
of the Earth
When I listen to the huaca music on Waves I feel as if I am being drawn
into an ancient mystery tradition where the secrets are all encoded
in the subtle blend of notes, evoking something ineffable from the heart
without passing through the mental region and its thoughts.
- Brian Swimme, Author of The Universe Story, and The Universe is
a Green Dragon
Alan brings together innovative technique and real heart to create a
new voice for guitar.
- Alex deGrassi solo guitar composer/performer
The rich movements of alan tower’s guitar on Arktos are both soothing
and unexpected. In addition to evoking nature’s beauty and texture,
they made me do things that very little new music in this music saturated
world makes me do any more. They made me stop what I was doing. And
listen. And feel gratitude.
- Alan AtKisson, sustainability consultant and author of Believing
Cassandra
Primary
compositional instruments:
huaca - A pan-cultural triple chambered clay wind instrument.
A radical innovation on the ocarina invented by Sharon Rowell of Berkeley,
CA in 1980. . I have 12 of these one-of-a-kind instruments that have
been fitted for my hands. They are in a variety of keys with two of
them having each the three chambers tuned to a major chord: F (FAC)
and E (EG#B). The split mouthpiece allows one, two or three chambers
to be played together in harmony. With three independent chambers of
complex sound arising from a single breath, the huaca for some seems
to trigger a response from strands of DNA long atrophied away - resonating
with an eternal place embedded in our genes.
didjeridu - An Australian aboriginal instrument discovered and
developed some 35,000 years ago by aboriginals in partnership with termites.
It is now played throughout the world. Made from a wide variety of woods
and cactus stalks each has a sound unique to the climate it grew in.
I primarliy play agave creations from Didjemana’s Jusse Nayeli,
a south african maker with the lowest pitch being a 9’6” G
called Fat Boy with a perfect natural taper. My approach tends to focus
on harmonic melodies above the drone, odd time signatures and working
on adding to the drone new sounds to create three striated clear notes,
bringing to mind Khoomei and Kagyraa styles of Tuvan throatsinging.
acoustic guitar - I have always been drawn to fingerstyle guitar
while often using two hand tapping, a technique developed by Michael
Hedges and Stanley Jordan which provides a striking independence of
bass, chords and melody.
fujara - A Slovakian instrument that allows for notes to be broken
up into their harmonic constituents, providing at times a beautiful
crystalline splattering effect.
Recordings
Recordings (released on Ancient Future Records.com) are each based on
a ecological or cultural
thematic idea with the different musical pieces linked together as one
whole:
10,000 Thunderstorms: the spirit of evolution
2003 Remaster - original pressing 2000
A mesmerizing sojourn into the cosmos. A 7 year project, this record
is a wild ride from the initial flashpoint of creation to the present.
A musical telling of the great story of the universe. A sound signature
of fired clay, alloy, wood and agave towards a whiff of the spirit of
evolution. Like nothing else. 74 minutes
Waves- solo huaca 2001
11 Compositions for the haunting beauty of the huaca. The shape of the
instrument reminds some of lungs or the heart, while the finish looks
ancient and earthy. The sound has a primal quality that can call up
memories of a distant past. The overall concept of Waves is the ocean
as our own 70% salt water body with human activities creating a growing
toxicity, requiring a radical change in perspective about our role here.
The Eternal Presence 2003
transcendent four part didjeridu compositions for deep listening,
yoga, massage & meditation
This project was recorded in a 50 yd stone tunnel overlooking the Golden
Gate Bridge, which transforms the sound with its radically powerful
resonance.
The collaboration features master players from South Africa, Mexico
& the U.S. on one-of-a-kind agave didjeridu instruments in harmony
ranging from 2 ft. to 10 ft. long. 71 minutes
Arktos - crystalline compositions for guitar
- solo, duo & bass 2004
11 truly innovative pieces touching on archetypal Arctic elements of
raw natural beauty, glaciers, & ocean rhythms as well as the intuition,
sorrow & equanimity around preservation of this frontier wilderness.
With virtuoso Matthew Montfort on second guitar.
Quintessence - 1974-1998 best acoustic instrumentals
and songs 1998
Pieces linked together into a whole using short historical audio clips
providing a backdrop for the year each piece was composed.
Upcoming - Bearing Witness: our vanishing
ethnosphere Summer 2004
solo & duo didjeridu
We are in the middle of a mass extinction estimated by experts conservatively
to be 5,000 times higher than the expected natural extinction rate.
A singe species - ours- is responsible for this sixth extinction crisis
in the history of life. Languages are disappearing at five times this
rate of species extinction. Each language, is in itself, an entire ecosystem
of ideas and intuitions, a watershed of thought, an old growth forest
of the mind. The world is in a massive phase of homogenization brought
about primarily by relentless corporate values & actions - the global
corporatization of world culture - resulting in the tearing apart of
indigenous cultures through the mining and destruction ofsensitive ecosystem
for profit.
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