John Abercrombie

I don't remember what was going through my mind, but what was going through my body was fear and terror. read more

I don't remember what was going through my mind, but what was going through my body was fear and terror. I had been on the road with Johnny and working gigs and playing a lot of the organ clubs.

Classical musicians do this all the time. They want perfection. So they piece things together. Eight bars of this and read more

Classical musicians do this all the time. They want perfection. So they piece things together. Eight bars of this and six bars of that. Glenn Gould said that with a recording he wanted to make perfect versions of pieces.

I felt like there's a lot of kids that could have played quarterback. We picked (Doolittle) because he's a big read more

I felt like there's a lot of kids that could have played quarterback. We picked (Doolittle) because he's a big kid, got a great arm and he runs the offense that we're going to be using.

You're just sort of searching for this "thing" and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is read more

You're just sort of searching for this "thing" and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo.

Every time I listen back to solos of mine I'll hear something I like and then another phrase that I read more

Every time I listen back to solos of mine I'll hear something I like and then another phrase that I can't stand. You have to live with what you play. And the recording medium puts that on us. When I play live gigs I don't think so much like that.