My review of John Abercrombie Quartet's Ottawa, Canada show on February 15, 2014, today at All About Jazz.
It's always a treat to see some of your jazz heroes performing in your hometown, but it's an even greater pleasure to see some of them performing together in the same group. Guitarist John Abercrombie, pianist Marc Copland and bassist Drew Gress have been working together for nearly two decades, and they've all found their way to Ottawa, Canada at one time or another. But the chance to hear, in concert, the trio that—with Billy Hart on drums and under Copland's titular leadership, first released Second Look (Savoy Jazz) in 1996, and followed that record up with 2008's Another Place (Pirouet)—reunited in the spring of 2013 to record 39 Steps (ECM, 2013), with the relentlessly surprising drummer Joey Baron replacing Hart, was a dream come true.
A dream clearly shared by many in the packed house at Library and Archives Canada—once a regular spot for the festival's late afternoon Connoisseur Series, but dormant since the retirement of the venue's Randall Prescott a couple years back. This was a quartet that truly exemplified the concept of collective improvisational freedom. Beyond a set list that, other than an opening warm-up for the group—a sublime reading of "I Should Care," subsequently introduced by Abercrombie as, "or, as the late, great Jim Hall called it, 'I Should Care...But I Don't'"—seemed to be put together on the spot, as Abercrombie conferred with his band mates to decide what they should play next, it was the complete and utter relaxed way that all four musicians played together that made each and every piece in the 90-minute set a gem.
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Originally Posted by markinottawa
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