The First Quartet John Abercrombie Quartet

• 1Arcade09:43
• 2Nightlake05:35
• 3Paramour05:09
• 4Neptune07:34
• 5Alchemy11:33
• 6Blue Wolf08:33
• 7Dear Rain06:54
• 8Stray06:36
• 9Madagascar09:05
• 10Riddles08:12
• 11Foolish Dog06:18
• 12Boat Song09:57
• 13M06:19
• 14What Are the Rules07:33
• 15Flashback06:17
• 16To Be05:17
• 17Veils05:44
• 18Pebbles04:45
• Total Runtime02:11:04

Info for The First Quartet

This triple album set with recordings from 1978 to 1980, issued in ECM s acclaimed Old & New Masters series, returns some historically-important material to the catalog, namely the albums Arcade, Abercrombie Quartet and M. The quartet with Richie Beirach, George Mraz and Peter Donald John Abercrombie s first touring band as a leader was the group in which the guitarist defined some priorities, moving away from a jazz-rock period into a more spacious, impressionistic and original music. Abercrombie and pianist Beirach had a strong musical rapport as improvisers and wrote almost all of the band s book between them. George Mraz and Peter Donald provided imaginative support. For this edition the recordings - made in Oslo and Ludwigsburg and produced by Manfred Eicher were remastered from original analog sources.

The quartet with Richie Beirach, George Mraz and Peter Donald – John Abercrombie's first touring band as a leader – was the group in which the guitarist defined some priorities, moving away from a jazz-rock period into a more spacious, impressionistic and original music. Abercrombie and pianist Beirach had a strong musical rapport as improvisers and wrote almost all of the band's book between them. George Mraz and Peter Donald provided imaginative support.

For this edition the recordings - made in Oslo and Ludwigsburg and produced by Manfred Eicher – were re-mastered from original analog sources. It's a first appearance on CD for these discs in most world territories ('Arcade' was briefly available on compact disc in Japan) and re-release of these titles has been much requested by followers of both Abercrombie and Beirach as well as ECM collectors.

From the liner notes, by John Kelman: 'With the release of 'Arcade', 'Abercrombie Quartet' and 'M', John Abercrombie's entire ECM discography as a leader is finally available on CD. Looking back at these discs and their position in his oeuvre, they are revealed as seminal documents of Abercrombie's arrival as a distinctive writer, improvising guitarist and bandleader. […] Abercrombie's subsequent career has, in many ways, been built on the foundational strength of these early quartet recordings.'

John Abercrombie, guitars, mandolin
Richie Beirach, piano
George Mraz, double bass
Peter Donald, drums

John Abercrombie
Over a career spanning more than 40 years and nearly 50 albums, John Abercrombie has established himself as one the masters of jazz guitar. Favoring unusual sounds (he played electronic mandolin on McCoy Tyner's 1993 album 4x4) and nontraditional ensembles (recent quartet recordings have included violinist Mark Feldman), Abercrombie is a restless experimenter, working firmly in the jazz tradition while pushing the boundaries of meter and harmony.'

Born on December 16, 1944 in Port Chester, New York, Abercrombie grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he began playing the guitar at age 14. Like many teenagers at the time, he started out imitating Chuck Berry licks. But it was the bluesy music of Barney Kessel that attracted him to jazz. Abercrombie enrolled at Boston's Berklee College of Music and teamed up with other students to play local clubs and bars. One of those clubs, Paul's Mall, was connected to a larger club next door, the Jazz Workshop, where Abercrombie ducked in during his free time to watch John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk.

Abercrombie's appearances at Paul's Mall led to several fortuitous meetings. Organist Johnny Hammond Smith spotted the young Abercrombie and invited him to go on tour while he was still a student. During the same period, Ambercrombie also met the Brecker Brothers, who invited him to become a new part of their group Dreams, which would become one the prominent jazz-rock bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Abercrombie appears on the group's eponymous debut album.

After graduating from Berklee, Abercrombie headed to New York, where he quickly became one of New York's most in-demand session players. He recorded with Gil Evans, Gato Barbieri, and Barry Miles, to name a few. He was also a regular with Chico Hamilton?s group. '

But it was in Billy Cobham's band, which also featured the Brecker brothers, that Abercrombie first started to build a following. He was featured on several of Cobham's albums, including Crosswinds, Total Eclipse and Shabazz, all of which staked new ground in fusion jazz. The group was booked into large concert halls and arenas, appearing on bills with such top rock attractions as the Doobie Brothers. It was not, however, the direction Abercrombie had hoped his career would go. 'One night we appeared at the Spectrum in Phildelphia and I thought, what am I doing here?' he said. 'It just didn?t compute.'

In the early 1970s, Abercrombie ran into Manfred Eicher, who invited him to record for ECM. The result was Abercrombie's first solo album, Timeless, in which he was backed by Jan Hammer and Jack DeJohnette. Abercrombie's second album, Gateway, was released in November 1975 with DeJohnette and bassist Dave Holland; a second Gateway recording was released in June 1978.

He then moved on to a traditional quartet format, recording three albums on ECM--Arcade, Abercrombie Quartet, and M--with pianist Richie Beirach, bassist George Mraz and drummer Peter Donald. 'It was extremely important to have that group for many reasons,' Abercrombie told AAJ in 2004. 'It was, of course, a good band, but it was also my first opportunity to really be a leader and to write consistently for the same group of musicians.'

His second group, a trio with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Peter Erskine, marked the first time he experimented with the guitar synthesizer. This gave him the opportunity to play what he called 'louder, more open music' with a propulsive beat, demonstrated in the group's three releases, Getting There (featuring Michael Brecker) in 1987, Current Events in 1988, and John Abercrombie, Marc Johnson & Peter Erskine in 1989.

From there, he moved to partnerships that he would shuffle and reshuffle for the next 20 years. He reunited with his Gateway bandmembers in 1995 for an album appropriately titled Homecoming, but not before forming yet a third ensemble that would make several recordings together. Abercrombie had long been enamored with the sound of jazz organ, so he teamed with organist Dan Wall and drummer Adam Nussbaum in While We Were Young and Speak of the Devil (both 1993) and, in 1997 Tactics. Another album, titled Open Land, added violinist Mark Feldman and saxophonist Joe Lovano to the mix.

His affiliation with Feldman, in a quartet that included Marc Johnson and drummer Joey Barron, ushered in a period of looser, freer, almost improvisatory playing. 'I like free playing that has some relationship to a melody; very much the way Ornette Coleman used to write all those wonderful songs and then they would play without chords on a lot of them,' he told AAJ. In fact, Abercrombie's work from this period has been compared to chamber music, with its delicacy of sound and telepathic communication between musicians.

Throughout the 1990s and into 2000 and beyond, Abercrombie has continued to pluck from the ranks of jazz royalty--and be plucked for guest appearances on other artists' recordings. One propitious relationship was with guitarist, pianist, and composer Ralph Towner, with whom Abercrombie has worked in a duet setting. (Abercrombie has also worked in guitar duos with John Scofield, for 1993's Solar and with Joe Beck in Coincidence, released in 2007). Abercrombie has also recorded with saxophonist Jan Garbarek and bassist Eddie Gomez.

Abercrombie keeps up a heavy touring schedule and continues to record with ECM, a relationship that has spanned more than 30 years. As he told one interviewer, 'I'd like people to perceive me as having a direct connection to the history of jazz guitar, while expanding some musical boundaries.' That, no doubt, will be his legacy.

Booklet for The First Quartet