Oregon

Oregon is a jazz and world music group, with core members Ralph Towner (guitar, piano, synthesizer, trumpet), Paul McCandless (woodwind instruments), Glen Moore (double bass, violin, piano), and Collin Walcott (percussion, sitar, tabla) Towner, McCandless, Moore, and Walcott met as members of world music pioneer Paul Winter's "Consort" ensemble in the late 1960s. Their contributions were seminal in establishing the Winter Consort "sound" in compo... more

Oregon is a jazz and world music group, with core members Ralph Towner (guitar, piano, synthesizer, trumpet), Paul McCandless (woodwind instruments), Glen Moore (double bass, violin, piano), and Collin Walcott (percussion, sitar, tabla) Towner, McCandless, Moore, and Walcott met as members of world music pioneer Paul Winter's "Consort" ensemble in the late 1960s. Their contributions were seminal in establishing the Winter Consort "sound" in compositions like Towner's "Icarus." The four musicians broke away from Winter in 1970 to form their own group, Oregon (Towner and Moore met while students at the University of Oregon). They recorded their first record in 1970, but the label, Increase Records, went out of business before it could be released. (It was released by Vanguard in 1980 as Our First Record.) The group's first release was Music of Another Present Era in 1972. With that debut and its follow-ups Distant Hills and Winter Light (all on Vanguard), Oregon established itself as... less