Metheny toured in the U.S. in fall 1980 with a quartet including Redman, Haden and drummer Paul Motian.[1] In the summer of 1981, he toured Europe with the full 80/81 lineup featured on the album.[2]
In a review for AllMusic, Richard S. Ginell wrote that "Metheny's credibility with the jazz community went way up with the release of this package", and called the album "a superb two-CD collaboration with a quartet of outstanding jazz musicians that dared to be uncompromising at a time when most artists would have merely continued pursuing their electric commercial successes."[3]
In an article at Between Sound and Space, Tyran Grillo called the album a "still-fresh sonic concoction", and noted that "With 80/81, Pat Metheny took one step closer to his dream of working with The Prophet of Freedom (Ornette Coleman) (a dream he finally achieved with 1985's Song X)". He concluded: "Like much of what Metheny produces, 80/81 is wide open in two ways. First in its far-reaching vision, and second it its willingness to embrace the listener. Like a dolly zoom, he enacts an illusion of simultaneous recession and approach, lit like a fuse that leads not to an explosion, but to more fuse."[6]
JazzTimes included the album in an article titled "10 Best Jazz Albums of the 1980s: Critics' Picks", in which Philip Booth stated: "Enlisting four of the musicians he most admired... the 26-year-old guitarist successfully translated the sound in his head to beautifully open, airy, sometimes urgent recordings."[7]
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