The bandstand's loss has been jazz education's gain in the case of Mick Goodrick, the Berklee-taught guitarist who was Pat Metheny's predecessor with Gary Burton in the 1970s and then a Charlie Haden sideman, but rarely left the classroom later. Previously-untried jazz harmony has been Goodrick's obsession for years (as a Berklee guitar prof, he was the co-author of Mr Goodchord's Almanac of Guitar Voice-Leading in 2000, hailed by stars from Metheny to Michael Brecker and Carla Bley), and this 1978 ECM session with an A-list quartet already indicates how provocative his accompaniments were, and how inventively he folds solo lines into oddball chords. He quietly augments John Surman's resolving soprano-sax phrases on the dreamy ‘In The Tavern of Rubin’ and wraps pinging treble notes and clipped turning figures into softly abrasive chords in his own solo – while the warmly baritone-led ballad ‘Feebles, Fables and Ferns’ confirms his elegance as a melodic improviser, and the impact of Surman's slithery agility and power on the baritone. ‘Summer Band Camp’ is a fiendishly byzantine post-bop time-bender, ‘Pedalpusher’ is a bass clarinet waltz that becomes an Eddie Gomez-led bass walk for a gleaming Goodrick break, and the title-track is a collective improv, cajoled and prodded by the drumming of an increasingly irresistible Jack DeJohnette. A guitar-buff's curiosity maybe, but a one-off US/UK post-bop session of real character too.