Art & Creativity Quote by John Abercrombie

Abercrombie turns improvisation into a kind of honest labor: you hunt for a “thing” you can’t fully name, and the hunt matters as much as the catch. The word choice is disarmingly plain - “sort of,” “thing” - which is exactly the point. Jazz talk often gets dressed up in mysticism or virtuoso mythology; he refuses that. He frames inspiration as intermittent, not a faucet you control, and that humility reads like a quiet rebuke to the perfectionist fantasy baked into a lot of studio-era music culture.

“All music is imperfect” lands like a thesis statement, but it’s also a permission slip. Imperfection isn’t a flaw to be airbrushed; it’s the evidence that something alive happened in real time. In jazz, the imperfections are louder because the decisions are public. You can’t edit out the moment you chose the wrong note, or when your hands moved faster than your ears. Abercrombie’s subtext: the risk is the music.

The most revealing phrase is “follow my train of thought.” He doesn’t describe a solo as executing licks or displaying chops; it’s cognition made audible. That aligns with his reputation for lyrical, searching guitar lines in post-bop and ECM-adjacent worlds, where space, tone, and direction matter as much as speed. He’s not chasing a perfect solo; he’s chasing coherence under pressure - the fleeting sensation that your mind, your instrument, and the band are briefly agreeing on what happens next.