John Abercrombie Quartet: Wait Till You See Her (ECM 179 8630)
If you were lucky enough to be in New York this evening and could beat the house full sign, you could hear this band at Birdland. They are there till Saturday.
Three of the four go way back, are long in the lineage, you might say, and have the unity and sympathetic subtlety to prove it. The fourth is a new kid in town, but a remarkably mature one and he fits in a treat. John Abercrombie on the guitar, then, Mark Feldman on violin and Joey Baron on drums, with Thomas Morgan, just 28, and the names of Steve Colman and Paul Motian already on his CV, on bass.
The opener, Sad Song, is simply sublime, the follower Line-Up shows the quartet at its loose and free best, and then there is the title track, a Rodgers and Hart standard, and played with all the understated nuance Miles and Gil brought to it on the Quiet Nights album, but also with the slow reflective nature of Bill Evans. Anniversary Waltz (no, not that one) is the kind of thing Abercrombie excels at: he and Feldman sharing the melody, Baron bringing all kinds of cymbal inventiveness into play, Morgan turning in a very tasty solo, and the whole thing lasting an unhurried nine minutes plus, with Abercrombie beefing it up slightly just at the finish.
So cohesive is this band it seems a crime to single anybody out, but it strikes me everytime I hear him what an astonishingly fine player Mark Feldman is. Here is a violinist who can do the classical thing, yet spent a while in Nashville playing country. He now seems capable of being all the violinists I’ve ever dreamed of (and I dream of my ideals a lot because in my waking world I’ve never been too keen on the instrument – in fact there are only three players I am able to call to mind that I really like: Feldman, Jenny Scheinman and L Shankar). Here Feldman is lyrical soloist, a string section accompanist and all kinds of support.
Baron is probably my all-time favourite drummer, and just delightful in every way, in every tempo, at every volume. He does some great gong work at the beginning of I’ve Overlooked Before, with Morgan precise just above and Feldman and Abercrombie meandering over the top to magical effect.
Morgan more than holds his own in this exalted company, which is just as well as this is a quartet of equals.
And what is there left to say about John Abercrombie, probably the finest musical descendent of the Jim Hall school of guitar playing – the kind that demands great technique but never for its own sake and always in the service of a deeper expression. I’ve been listening to Abercrombie since the very earliest years of ECM – in duet with Ralph Towner on Sargasso Sea, alongside Lester Bowie in the lovely New Directions quartet led by Jack DeJohnette, and in his organ trios discs – I’ve seen him live from the wings in the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham, and I’ve never heard him play a note I didn’t believe in.
Wait Till You See Her is as fine as anything in his back catalogue.
The new double disc by the Jan Garbarek Group is called Dresden and is the first live recording the Norwegian saxophonist has released under his own name since he started recording for ECM nearly 40 years ago, and Jan talked to thejazzbreakfast about it, and about how he found his sound, how he met Manfred Eicher, and what makes ECM so special.
In 1969 I was listening to the Incredible String Band and Jimi Hendrix, but also Charles Lloyd and Herbie Mann. Down at the southern tip of Africa, word of a new German record label called Editions of Contemporary Music had not yet reached us.
A new and regular feature on thejazzbreakfast. Each week photographer Russ Escritt sends me his favourite picture of the week, or perhaps one from his extensive archive. Today, from the archive, comes US saxophonist Dave Liebman, here playing wooden flute during his CBSO Centre gig with the Phil Robson band.
