Track length: | 6:21 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Abjohn Music |
Composer: | John Abercrombie |
ISRC: | DEB331333451 |
Track length: | 6:51 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Maralco Music |
Composer: | Marc Copland |
ISRC: | DEB331333452 |
Track length: | 7:21 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Abjohn Music |
Composer: | John Abercrombie |
ISRC: | DEB331333453 |
Track length: | 6:15 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Abjohn Music |
Composer: | John Abercrombie |
ISRC: | DEB331333454 |
Track length: | 4:08 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Abjohn Music |
Composer: | John Abercrombie |
ISRC: | DEB331333455 |
Track length: | 6:53 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Maralco Music |
Composer: | Marc Copland |
ISRC: | DEB331333456 |
Track length: | 5:22 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Abjohn Music |
Composer: | John Abercrombie |
ISRC: | DEB331333457 |
Track length: | 3:12 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Maralco Music |
Jagged Sky Music | |
Goo Head Music | |
Abjohn Music | |
Composer: | Marc Copland |
John Abercrombie | |
Joey Baron | |
Drew Gress | |
ISRC: | DEB331333458 |
Track length: | 8:36 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Abjohn Music |
Composer: | John Abercrombie |
ISRC: | DEB331333459 |
Track length: | 4:40 |
Artist: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Performer: | John Abercrombie Quartet |
Genre: | Jazz |
Publisher: | Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Inc. |
Composer: | Ernie Bernett |
George A. Norton | |
ISRC: | DEB331333460 |
John Abercrombie - guitar
Marc Copland - piano
Drew Gress - double bass
Joey Baron - drums
Recorded April 2013
John Abercrombie’s revised quartet provides Marc Copland with his first appearance on ECM. Yet guitarist and pianist are old allies, with an association stretching back forty years. In the early 1970s both were members of Chico Hamilton’s quartet, and at the dawn of fusion both played with pioneering jazz-rock band Dreams. Since the late 1990s they’ve revived their partnership in diverse contexts and have toured in formations ranging from piano-guitar duo to trio with Kenny Wheeler to the cooperative group Contact with Dave Liebman and Billy Hart. For much of the last decade Abercrombie and Copland have also each had bassist Drew Gress as a regular member of their respective bands so “39 Steps” draws on a network of trusted relationships. Jazz ballads and lyricism predominate on this disc with six tunes from Abercrombie’s pen, two Copland tunes, one collective improvisation, and a creative deconstruction of the old standard “Melancholy Baby”. The album – produced by Manfred Eicher at New York’s Avatar Studio in April 2013 – is issued in time for a European tour by the quartet with concerts in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, Hungary and Macedonia.
Abercrombie describes himself as “a late bloomer” vis-à-vis “Kind of Blue”: “It was released in ’59 but I didn’t hear it until 1962, when I was a student in Boston. I was completely captured by Miles’s playing on that album, the simplicity and beauty of it. Of course, the album is meanwhile so well-known that certain tunes have been practically worn out with repetition. But I thought it was still possible to play something fresh on the chord progressions of ‘Flamenco Sketches’ and create our own melodies.”
Coltrane’s “Crescent”, was also the subject of intense scrutiny in Abercrombie’s Boston years. “I had loved the way Coltrane played ballads, but ‘Crescent’ seemed to be a centrepiece for the new music he was working on: the new tunes, with the long rubato intros, of which ‘Wise One’ was a great example. Music of real beauty.”
Abercrombie also adds compositions of his own to the programme. “Easy Reader”, an amiable Abercrombie waltz, makes a nod to Dennis Hop...