John Abercrombie has played on more than fifty ECM sessions, both as a leader and highly creative contributor to recordings with Charles Lloyd, Kenny Wheeler, Jan Garbarek, Collin Walcott, Jack DeJohnette, Enrico Rava, Barre Phillips, Dave Liebman and many more. Along the way his playing has evolved, becoming, he says, both freer and more traditional, without ever renouncing experimentation. His 2011 recording Without A Song, with Joe Lovano, Drew Gress and Joey Baron, reflected upon the music that first inspired him back in the 1960s, taking stock of the freedoms implied in the music of Coltrane, Coleman and Rollins, and emphasising his musical connections to Bill Evans and guitarist Jim Hall.
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Born in 1944 in Port Chester, New York, Abercrombie grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he began playing the guitar aged 14. He started out imitating Chuck Berry licks, but the bluesy music of Barney Kessel soon 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. After graduating, he went to New York, where he quickly became one of the city’s most in-demand session players and recorded with Gil Evans, Gato Barbieri and Barry Miles, among many others.
In the early 1970s, Abercrombie met Manfred Eicher, who invited him to record for ECM. The result was Abercrombie’s first solo album, Timeless, in which he was joined by Jan Hammer and Jack DeJohnette. In 1975 he recorded in the cooperative trio Gateway, with DeJohnette and bassist Dave Holland.
At the end of the 1970s he formed his first quartet, recording three albums – Arcade, Abercrombie Quartet, and M – with pianist Richie Beirach, bassist George Mraz and drummer Peter Donald (re-released as a 3-CD set, The First Quartet, in 2015). It was in this group in which the guitarist defined some priorities, moving away from a jazz-rock period into a more spacious, impressionistic and original music.
A trio with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Peter Erskine incorporated experiments with the guitar synthesizer, and what Abercrombie called “louder, more open music.”
He reunited with his Gateway coleagues in 1995 for an album titled Homecoming. Another propitious relationship has been with guitarist, pianist, and composer Ralph Towner, with whom Abercrombie has worked in duet setting.
In 2013 he recorded 39 Steps with Marc Copland (piano), Drew Gress (double bass), Joey Baron (drums). Of this album, on which jazz ballads and lyricism predominate, LondonJAzzNews wrote: “the entire album simply exudes class, elegance and assurance – a flawless recording from four masters of the craft at the top of their game”.