Mick Goodrick

CD version. Mick Goodrick (1945-2022) made only one album as a leader for ECM, and In Pas(s)ing is the clearest statement of what he was as a guitarist and composer. It was recorded in Oslo in November 1978 and released in 1979. His soft, harmonically rich playing sits at the centre of a quartet with John Surman, Eddie Gomez and Jack DeJohnette. The music is quiet on the surface and restless underneath, built on close interplay and melodies that linger long after the record ends.

Most listeners knew Goodrick from his work with Gary Burton, whose ECM albums The New Quartet, Ring and Dreams So Real he played on in the 1970s. He was also a teacher at Berklee whose influence reached a whole generation of guitarists, and Fred Hersch called him "the guitar whisperer". For his own date he chose Surman on baritone and soprano saxophones and bass clarinet, Gomez on double bass and DeJohnette on drums. The session took place at Talent Studio, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer.

Four of the five pieces are Goodrick originals, while the closing title track is a collective improvisation credited to all four players. Feebles, Fables and Ferns opens the album with Surman's baritone over an airy guitar line, a tune Goodrick recorded again in duo with Hersch on an album issued after his death. On the long In the Tavern of Ruin Surman switches to soprano for a probing solo, and the guitar answers with dark, original voicings. Pedalpusher sets his bass clarinet against Goodrick's dense chords, with Gomez in the foreground, and in In Passing DeJohnette leads the quartet through long arcs of tension and release.

The album was well received from the start. Melody Maker described Goodrick in 1979 as a "composer and leader who is content to allow his music to pirouette gracefully on the spot", and singled out his "beautiful interplay with Surman". DownBeat judged him "technically among the finest players around". Writing for ECM Reviews, Tyran Grillo gives Surman what amounts to a starring role, and John Scofield has said the album still holds up for today's listeners.

This CD is the 2019 reissue of ECM 1139 in the Touchstones series, which returns classic albums from the label's catalogue to print in cardboard sleeves. In Pas(s)ing was first released in 1979.