Artist Profile,
Essentials - John Abercrombie
American jazz guitarist John Abercrombie already had a number of session and live gigs under his belt by the time he began recording his own music. Having grown up in 1950s New York, his first musical attraction was the loud rock ‘n’ roll sounds of Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Fats Domino, but Abercrombie eventually found the jazz guitar sounds of Barry Kessel while taking guitar lessons in high school, eventually going on to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston. His post-Berklee life would soon lead him to finding success as a session player, though from the mid-70s onwards much of Abercrombie’s output consists of his own music, leading almost 60 albums until his passing in 2017 at the age of 72. While Abercrombie wasn’t unknown to release on other labels, his mainstay remained ECM, and is still the label he is most-often associated with.
While there’s a wealth of Abercrombie releases to go through – over four decades of it – here’s a handful of releases to get you started…
Abercrombie spent a good chunk of the early ‘70s playing in drummer Billy Cobham’s jazz fusion band, as well as taking numerous session gigs, but grew quickly wary of the more rock-oriented path his career seemed to be taking. It was around the same time that Abercrombie began working with both drummer Jack DeJohnette – with whom he worked on putting the ‘jazz’ back in his jazz fusion sound – as well as Manfred Eicher, who was the enabler of sorts that allowed Abercrombie to record his debut album. Timeless sees Abercrombie playing alongside DeJohnette, who by then had contributed to Miles Davis’ seminal work Bitches Brew, as well as keyboardist Jan Hammer, formerly of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra. While the fiery energy of the contemporary fusion sounds certainly makes an appearance, it’s the subtle ambient closer ‘Timeless’ that really leaves a lasting impression.
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Recorded much later in his career, Open Land finds Abercrombie paired with flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler – with whom Abercrombie had also worked on a handful of records – as well as saxophonist Joe Lovano, violinist Mark Feldman, organist Dan Wall, and drummer Adam Nussbaum, at the time a new ensemble that proved to be quite a texturally interesting lineup. While the group are playing Abercrombie pieces, he doesn’t so much lead the sextet, giving Open Land more of a collaborative feel.
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Shortly after the recording of Timeless, Abercrombie formed a new band called ‘Gateway’ with DeJohnette and bassist Dave Holland, recording two self-titled albums in the late ‘70s (and a later two after reuniting in the 1990s). 1976’s Gateway similarly stands against the trendy jazz fusion sounds of the time; with the Holland original ‘Back-Woods Song’ kicking off with a slick bluesy groove, the interplay between these three is killer, and we later get some more off-the-wall free jazz experiments, too.
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Something of a fan favourite, Night reunites the classic Timeless trio of Abercrombie, DeJohnette and Hammer, while also bringing on saxophonist Michael Brecker – Abercrombie had played alongside Michael and his brother Randy in jazz-rock band Dreams in the late ‘60s – unique for the somewhat surprising funk-influenced sound the quartet goes with. That being said, there’s still the occasional callback to the Timeless days, like the freaky free-jazz closer ‘Four On One’, or the more ambient and contemplative ‘Night’.
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Abercrombie’s first post-Gateway album in 1979 is a comparatively more traditional outing for the guitarist. Playing this time in a quartet of himself with pianist Richie Beirach, bassist George Mraz and drummer Peter Donald, the Arcade quartet gave Abercrombie the opportunity to write three albums’ worth of material for the same group of musicians, something he’d not had the chance to do before. The sounds on these three records are perhaps a little more conservative than the exciting jazz-rock and meditative sounds of early works like Timeless, but with Abercrombie Quartet and M following in the years after, it’s one of his more cohesive periods.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
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