John Abercrombie, Richie Beirach, George Mraz, Peter Donald

The First Quartet collects on three CDs the albums John Abercrombie recorded for ECM Records with his first touring band as a leader. They are Arcade, Abercrombie Quartet and M, made between 1978 and 1980. With pianist Richie Beirach, bassist George Mraz and drummer Peter Donald, the guitarist left his jazz-rock period behind for a more spacious, impressionistic music. These were the records in which he defined the priorities of his later work, and the set returns them to the catalogue.

Arcade was recorded in December 1978 and Abercrombie Quartet in November 1979, both at Talent Studio in Oslo with Jan Erik Kongshaug engineering. M followed in November 1980 at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg, engineered by Martin Wieland. Manfred Eicher produced all three. Abercrombie plays guitar and the electric mandolin guitar, often in its upper register, and Beirach is on piano. For this edition the music was remastered from the original analogue tapes, and the booklet has an essay by John Kelman with photographs by Rick Laird.

Abercrombie and Beirach wrote nearly the whole book between them, splitting the credits almost evenly, and the rapport between the two improvisers carries all three discs. Most pieces move at a loping mid-tempo, with a few faster, rock-tinged numbers for contrast. Arcade opens with its nearly ten-minute title track, and Beirach's Alchemy, at over eleven minutes, closes the first disc. On M, Stephen Graham of Marlbank heard a bustling optimism in the title track, and called Abercrombie's To Be the definitive ballad statement of the set. Mraz contributes a single tune, Pebbles, which closes the box.

The reissue was widely reviewed. In The Guardian, John Fordham wrote that the guitarist, though he chose a chamber-like style, "has always retained a diamond-hard clarity and expressive lyricism". Cormac Larkin of The Irish Times heard the group, over the three recordings, "developing into one of the great bands of the era". Jon Turney in London Jazz News (2016) noted that Mraz is formidable throughout.

This 3CD box (ECM 2478-80) was released in November 2015 in ECM's Old & New Masters series, which returns earlier albums from the label's catalogue in compact multi-disc sets. The original albums carry phonographic dates of 1979, 1980 and 1981.