John Abercrombie / Marc Copland Duo

The Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, 28/11/2016.

Described as a “Celebrity Jazz Recital” this lunchtime event was a late addition to Birmingham Conservatoire’s autumn concert programme and featured a duo performance by two of America’s leading jazz musicians, guitarist John Abercrombie and pianist Marc Copland.

The pair were in Birmingham to deliver a masterclass to the students on the Conservatoire’s celebrated Jazz Course and it was decided that they should also play a public concert. Such was the interest generated by these highly respected musicians that the Recital Hall at the Conservatoire was filled to capacity with an audience comprised of a mixture of the student body and the wider jazz public of the Midlands. 

John Abercrombie first emerged on the scene in the early 1970s as a turbo-charged fusion style guitarist in the group Dreams, which also featured the brothers Michael and Randy Brecker. He also had a stint in the band led by drummer Billy Cobham around this time. In 1974 Abercrombie signed with ECM Records and has remained with the company to this day. Abercrombie may not have reached the commercial heights of Keith Jarrett or Jan Garbarek but he has produced an impressive body of work for the label in a broad range of jazz styles and instrumental formats. “Timeless”, his ECM début, is well named, a superb trio session featuring keyboard player Jan Hammer and drummer Jack DeJohnette that still sounds great today. Abercrombie then formed the fondly remembered Gateway trio with DeJohnette and bassist Dave Holland, delivering three albums for ECM.

Following Gateway’s demise Abercrombie has continued to record prolifically for ECM leading a variety of groups, usually in the trio or quartet formats. Regular working bands have included an organ trio featuring Hammond player Dan Wall and drummer Adam Nussbaum and a particularly distinctive quartet featuring violinist Mark Feldman, bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joey Baron. He has also recorded two duo albums with fellow guitarist Ralph Towner, including the excellent “Sargasso Sea” from 1976, the first Abercrombie album that I ever purchased.

I’ll admit to being less familiar with Copland’s work. He first made his name as a saxophonist and first met Abercrombie when the pair played as sidemen in drummer Chico Hamilton’s band. In the 1980s Copland became disillusioned with the saxophone and decided to concentrate on the piano and worked as a sideman with trumpeter Wallace Roney and saxophonists Jane Ira Bloom, Joe Lovano and James Moody among others. Copland then formed a celebrated trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Billy Hart and was also part of a quintet featuring trumpeter Randy Brecker, saxophonist Bob Berg, bassist James Genus and drummer Dennis Chambers.

In the 21st century Copland has recorded prolifically for the German Pirouet label in formats ranging from solo piano to quartet. He has been particularly prolific as a duo partner, his collaborators including saxophonists Dave Liebman, Greg Osby and Tim Hagans, bassist Gary Peacock and fellow pianist Bill Carrothers. In 2015 he launched his own record label InnerVoice Jazz with the release of an excellent quartet album “Zenith” featuring trumpeter Ralph Alessi, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Joey Baron.

However for many British listeners Copland will be best known for his collaboration with the London based saxophonist Stan Sulzmann who recorded his acclaimed 2004 album “The Jigsaw” in New York with an American quartet featuring Copland, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Bill Stewart. Copland also visited the UK around this time to tour the album with Sulzmann. I remember seeing them at the Playhouse in Cheltenham but seem to recall that Drew Gress and Jochen Reuckert replaced Grenadier and Stewart in the rhythm section.

Since first meeting in the Chico Hamilton band Abercrombie and Copland have worked frequently together in various trios and quartets including a notable trio that teamed the pair with the late trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. They also recorded a 2011 duo set, “Speak To Me”, for Pirouet with a follow up scheduled on the same label in 2017.  In 2013 Copland appeared alongside Gress and Baron on Abercrombie’s ECM album “39 Steps” from which a number of today’s pieces were drawn.
 
Prior to today’s performance I’d seen Abercrombie perform live on two previous occasions, both of these being at Cheltenham Jazz Festival. In 2002 he appeared with the Feldman/Johnson/Baron quartet and in 2009 as a guest with saxophonist Julian Arguelles’ Anglo-American trio featuring bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tom Rainey. For me both shows were only partially successful. In the first Abercrombie was impressive enough but I didn’t really get on with Feldman’s playing. The second was the first date of a short UK tour and suffered from a lack of rehearsal time and was consequently a little ragged, despite including some great individual moments, not least from Abercrombie.

My interest in today’s show was piqued both by my previous individual sightings of Abercrombie and Copland but also by a highly enjoyable performance in the same instrumental format by pianist Ivo Neame and guitarist Maciek Pysz at the Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton in September 2016.  Most commentators will inevitably compare Abercrombie and Copland with the famous duo of Jim Hall and Bill Evans but for me Neame and Pysz represent a more personal and more contemporary yardstick.

And so to today’s performance which surprised me with its spontaneity. Unlike Neame and Pysz who adhered to a pre-ordained set list Abercrombie and Copland literally did make it up as they went along. “Shall we play a ballad?” enquired Copland at one point. “No, I’m not ready for that yet” Abercrombie replied. As Peter Bacon succinctly put it on his review of the concert for his Jazz Breakfast site “they had no plan -that was the plan”.

As his Cheltenham performance as a guest with the Arguelles trio implied Abercrombie seems to relish spontaneity and the idea of living in the musical moment. That may initially seem to be at odds with the ECM aesthetic but the truth is that most ECM albums are recorded very quickly, often over just a couple of days. Producer Manfred Eicher ensures that the recorded sound is clear and pristine and that the musicians are heard at their best but that doesn’t detract from the freshness and spontaneity of the performances. It’s certainly an approach that has served Abercrombie very well over the years.

Abercrombie is now aged seventy one and has aged visibly since I last saw him. He seemed quite frail and remained seated throughout, eschewing the use of sheet music. In many respects the slightly younger Copland seemed to be guiding him, but not when it came to the music, as their exchange detailed above suggests.

Given their long musical history it’s perhaps not surprising that the rapport between the two men seemed to be almost telepathic. It was like listening to a conversation between two old friends, which, of course, is exactly what they are, as they finished each other’s phrases and picked up on one another’s ideas. It was all very relaxed and informal but was based on a shared understanding of an advanced musical language.

They commenced either with a heavily disguised version of the Cole Porter tune “Love For Sale” or even Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays”, depending on whether you read Peter Bacon’s review or Alan Musson’s for the UK Vibe website. Whatever they played it exemplified the duo’s intimate, conversational approach and their gentle shared humour. Both musicians soloed effectively but the best moments came in their shared musical exchanges.

From the “39 Steps” album came a version of “Another Ralph’s”, an updating of one Abercrombie’s most famous compositions, “Ralph’s Piano Waltz”, originally written for Ralph Towner and featured on “Timeless” as well as in Towner’s own repertoire. “When you run out of ideas you just start re-writing your old songs” observed the self deprecating Abercrombie – but of course there was far more to “Another Ralph’s” than just that.

The first couple of numbers seemed to suffer from something of a sound glitch but I couldn’t quite discern what it was, a faulty guitar pick up or a loose piano pedal, I never quite could decide but fortunately it seemed to disappear altogether as the set progressed.

The next piece began with a passage of unaccompanied piano and proved to be a delightful piece of ECM style balladry with the musicians making effective use of space in the manner for which the label is famed.  “That was a strange little song” observed Abercrombie at its conclusion, although he didn’t actually disclose the title. I suspect that it may have been “Vertigo”, the beautiful Abercrombie tune that opens the “39 Steps” album.

From the same album came “Greenstreet”, an Abercrombie composition that I surmised might be a dedication to the British born actor Sydney Greenstreet (1879-1954), although I could be wrong. The impromptu nature of today’s performance was epitomised by Abercrombie’s barely muffled “oh, shit!” as he made a mistake on the unaccompanied guitar intro. In this exposed musical situation any mistakes were inevitably amplified, but nobody seemed to mind too much, especially as the rest of the playing was sublime with both musicians delivering impressive individual features in addition to their empathic understanding as a duo.

They finally got around to that ballad with a delightful reading of Abercrombie’s “As It Stands” from the “39 Steps” album, one of the guitarist’s most beautiful compositions.

The final tune was unannounced but I suspect that it may have been one of Copland’s as his writing had not been featured thus far. He contributes a couple of tunes to “39 Steps”, so it may well have been one of these.

The audience had to shout long and hard for an encore and it’s possible that a frail Abercrombie may have been reluctant to come out again, he doesn’t walk well these days. In the end the crowd got their way and we were treated to a sparkling version of the standard “Hey There (You With The Stars In Your Eyes”) - and there was no possibility of mistaken identity with this one. 

Both the students and the older jazz fans at this one hour performance seemed delighted by what they’d heard. It wasn’t flawless by any means, but a slicker, more structured approach may have detracted from the charm of this good natured exchange of musical ideas between two old friends with a healthy respect for each others’ idiosyncrasies as well as their undoubted abilities. 

My thanks to Marc and John for speaking with me afterwards and I’d urge anyone reading this to check out “39 Steps” and also Copland’s new “Zenith” album. And of course each musician has a back catalogue of musical treasures that shouldn’t be overlooked. 

Peter Bacon’s review of this performance can be read here;
https://thejazzbreakfast.com/2016/11/29/john-abercrombie-marc-copland/

and Alan Musson’s here;
http://ukvibe.org/excursions/2016-excursions/marc-copland-and-john-abercrombie-birmingham-conservatoire/