Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, & John Abercrombie, Molde (1977)

01-Yr 00:18
02-Krusning
03-Distant Hills
Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner, John Abercrombie
Molde Jazz Festival
Molde, Norway
1977-08-xx

Jan Garbarek-saxophones
Ralph Towner-acoustic guitars
John Abercrombie-electric guitars

Source-professionally recording

Original comments: "This is a bit of mysterious date, for which I've been trying to get specific details, but after my efforts (plus some help from goody), there are some pretty good guesses, but still an element of mystery. I'm trying to move lots of cd-r's that I've picked up over many years of trades into flac files on hard drives. That's led to many of the shares I've uploaded here lately, with more to come. This present show is a great sounding recording and performance that fit in very well with some of those recent shares by ECM artitsts, but it was very hard to pin down definitive details as to the performance date, location, and sourcing.
First of all, I got this music about 20 years ago in a snail mail cd-r trade. The discs included another lengthy track with the info that all of the performances involved these 3 players on 2 consecutive March dates at the 1978 Molde Jazz Festival (3/8 and 3/9). Problem #1 was the fact that the second lengthy track I mentioned was Ralph Towner's Solstice Group with Garbarek, Eberhard Weber, and Jon Christenson. That turned out to be part of the show that's already active here from Towner's Solstice Group in August, 1978 at Molde. Problem #2 is that this festival seems to always be held as July becomes August, which makes plenty of sense given the northerly location, so the March date that I had was pretty definitely wrong.
Searching around I found reference to the trio of Garbarek, Towner, and Abercrombie playing Molde in 1977. Besides that, Garbarek's 1977 ECM release was called Dis, and it featured Towner on a few tracks, including the first 2 played here. Towner's Distant Hills, played here, was the title track of an Oregon album, but it was also on Towner's 2nd Soltice recording for ECM that also dates to 1977. Abercrombie recorded the 2nd Gateway trio album and his Characters solo album in 1977 in Norway. Therefore, I'm willing to believe this 77 Molde Festival date, given connections to the music played and all of them being in and around the Norway studio that ECM was using. I'm sure there may have been other ECM recordings made that year, which included some combination of these players.
Having made my case for Molde, 1977, I can't say for sure if this was late July or early August. The music itself is beautifully recorded and played, so my feeling is it came from either a video broadcast, FM (there's no DJ or radio intro), or it's a soundboard. There are etree references to a less complete version, and using the 78 date, that have it sourced as an FM. There are professionally shot Muddy Waters and Max Roach videos that date to the 1977 Molde Festival, so this may have originated with that same set-up.
Sorry that I can't do any better than that.I'm grateful to the trader who made this available to me, but that was long ago, and there was no specific sourcing info with my disc. If anyone has more specific details, please do write them in the comments below.
Thanks to the trader who made this available, and to whoever began circulating this show. Be sure to support the musicians you admire by paying to see them live, and through purchasing their commercially released material."

Thanks to the amazing jswetch.

Footage and production by bigfootpegrande.