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John Abercrombie

Over a career spanning more than 40 years and nearly 50 albums, John Abercrombie 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 was 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 band members 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 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. He recorded with a wide roster of ECM label artists for many years.

Abercrombie continued to tour and record to the end of his life. All of his later recordings were with the ECM label, a relationship that has spanned more than 40 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.

In 2017, Abercrombie died of heart failure in Cortlandt Manor, New York, at the age of 72 Source: Michael Wieskamp

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John Abercrombie, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette: Gateway

Read "Gateway" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
July 27, 2024

Maybe in a world a-tuned to the sound of people seeking their own expressive modal dialogue to negotiate, barter, pray or prevent the king's rise, Gateway would have been the greatest jazz guitar trio album ever made. It certainly feels that way when one slips this handsome disc from its wrappings, handle gently to the turntable, and set the stylus down. It is like 1975 again (the good parts anyway): the head high, the mood mellow. Maybe one ...

Album Review

Jack DeJohnette: Sorcery

by Rob Garratt
September 18, 2023

Which Jack DeJohnette is best known? The subtle sticksmith at the heart of Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio, perhaps? Probably the heavyweight hitter driving electric-era Miles Davis' '70s sonic brew. Maybe the percussive upstart propelling Charles Lloyd to crossover flower-power fame? Or even the fearless bandleader behind the ever-thrilling Special Edition band ... At age 81, DeJohnette can (still) fairly claim to be the most in-demand jazz drummer on the planet. But even the most studious acolyte ...

Album Review

Jack DeJohnette: Sorcery

by Scott Gudell
August 7, 2023

Jack DeJohnette gets around. The Chicago born drummer was drawn to R&B and bebop in the late 1950s and eventually toyed with a more avant-garde jazz sound when he spent some time with the esoteric Sun Ra. It seems like DeJohnette played in the big leagues almost from the beginning since, by the time he moved to New York City in the mid-1960s, he was teaming up with other monsters of jazz such as Keith Jarrett and Charles Lloyd. Several ...

Liner Notes

John Abercrombie: The First Quartet

by John Kelman
February 9, 2023

With the release of Arcade (1979), Abercrombie Quartet (1980) and M (1981), John Abercrombie's entire ECM discography as a leader is finally available on CD. Looking back at these albums and their position in his oeuvre, they are revealed as seminal documents of Abercrombie's arrival as a distinctive writer, improvising guitarist and bandleader, delivering on the promise of his first two ECM recordings under his own name, Timeless (1975) and Characters (1977). Abercrombie's subsequent career has, in many ways, been ...

Album Review

John Abercrombie and Don Thompson: Yesterdays

Read "Yesterdays" reviewed by Don Phipps

by Don Phipps
January 21, 2020

The late John Abercrombie's outstanding and extensive recorded legacy includes two duet albums with fellow guitarist Ralph Towner, Sargasso Sea (ECM 2008) and Five Years Later (ECM, 2014), four Gateway trio albums (with bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette), and three Baseline Trio albums (with bassist Hein Van de Geyn and drummer Joe LaBarbera). Like those albums, Yesterdays finds him at his guitar-picking best, collaborating on this one with bassist Don Thompson. Recorded live in 1992 at ...

Film Review

Open Land: Meeting John Abercrombie

by John Kelman
August 16, 2018

John Abercrombie Open Land: Meeting John AbercrombieMusic Heritage Productions / ECM Records2018 It's almost a year to the day since the world lost John Abercrombie and, for many of his fans, that loss remains something still deeply and palpably felt. A guitarist who managed to be instantly recognizable without relying on many of the signatures that help identify most guitarists--certain approaches to phrasing and melody and specific tonal approaches amongst them--Abercrombie may not have garnered ...

Film Review

Open Land: Meeting John Abercrombie

by Mark Sullivan
August 8, 2018

John Abercrombie Open Land: Meeting John Abercrombie Music Heritage Productions / ECM Records 2018 Named after John Abercrombie's 1999 ECM album of the same name (by his trio with organist Dan Wall and drummer Adam Nussbaum, plus guests trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, violinist Mark Feldman and saxophonist Joe Lovano), Open Land finds the guitarist late in his career. Much of the ninety minute run time shows him talking about his life as a jazz guitarist and ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: John Abercrombie

Source: Michael Ricci
December 16, 2022

All About Jazz is celebrating John Abercrombie's birthday today!

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: John Abercrombie

Source: Michael Ricci
December 16, 2021

All About Jazz is celebrating John Abercrombie's birthday today!

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, ...
read more

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: John Abercrombie

Source: Michael Ricci
December 16, 2020

All About Jazz is celebrating John Abercrombie's birthday today!

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: John Abercrombie

Source: Michael Ricci
December 16, 2019

All About Jazz is celebrating John Abercrombie's birthday today!

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: John Abercrombie

Source: Michael Ricci
December 16, 2018

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: John Abercrombie

Source: Michael Ricci
December 16, 2017

Obituary

John Abercrombie: 1944-2017

Source: Universal Music Group
August 23, 2017

From Tina Pelikan at ECM Records It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of the great guitarist John Abercrombie. John Abercrombie, one of the great improvisers, died on August 22, after a long illness. He will be much missed, for his sensitive musicality, his good companionship, and his dry humor which enhanced many a session. He leaves behind an extensive discography which will be studied as long as people continue to play jazz guitar. John made his ...
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Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: John Abercrombie

Source: Michael Ricci
December 16, 2016

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: John Abercrombie

Source: Michael Ricci
December 16, 2015

Education

Music Education Monday: John Abercrombie on jazz guitar improvisation

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
April 13, 2015

While guitarist John Abercrombie was in jny: St. Louis last week to lead his quartet in a sold-out performance for the Jazz at Holmes series at Washington University, he and pianist Marc Copland also did an afternoon master class on the Wash U campus. Fortunately for those who missed out, a while back Abercrombie recorded an instructional video for Homespun Tapes about his concepts for jazz guitar improvisation. That video has found its way onto YouTube and can be seen ...
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