Gateway

With "daring and visionary spirit," to quote a Downbeat review from 1976 after the album's release, master improvisers John Abercrombie, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette forged a unique vision of trio interplay on their first joint effort under the Gateway moniker. The trio tackles Holland and DeJohnette originals with a visionary idea of what three-way conversations in jazz could sound like. As The Observer remarked in an article of the time, "the telepathic ensemble playing and perfect execution make it difficult to believe that this music is almost completely improvised." The players' respectively unique instrumental signatures had already fully crystallized here, hinting at the music to come.