Biography

ALAN TOWER

A passion for sound began with early years on piano, leading to 20 years composing for solo acoustic fingerstyle and Hedges style tapping guitar. In 1991 a hand injury closed the door on guitar and opened the door to new instruments of resonance - Huaca, a three chambered clay flute with split mouthpiece - Hang, a sound floating amidst steel pan and gamelan - the Soundstone, singing granite that redefines musical categories, and Didjeridu. These instruments can be heard on 9 original CD’s on three labels. Alan has collaborated with many world music luminaries including Stephen Kent, Mark Deutsch, Jai Uttal, Matthew Montfort, Michael Smolens and composer/author, Jason Martineau. In 2003 he launched Green Music Network, known for their Cave Concerts, and now works full time developing plans for The Resonance Center. Over the years his interest in the science of sound has grown, with his work culminating in the development of The Soundflower, a unique drone chamber for experiencing vocal resonance. His teacher is Allaudin Mathieu, author of Harmonic Experience and The Listening Book.

“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

“The sound of Tower’s Hanghang compositions have a poetic logic - like a particle and a wave, both predictable and unpredictable at the same time. Transcends and includes duality. Takes you on a limbic journey - back to the dinosaur brain and forward to Thomas Berry's noetic consciousness. And for dancers, it moves through space.”
- Karen Attix, Merce Cunningham Company dancer

“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

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.