With Uma Elmo, his fifth album as a leader for ECM, Danish guitarist Jakob Bro presents a new trio featuring Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy. Astonishingly, given the trio’s musical synergy, the first time these three musicians ever performed together was for the album’s sessions at the Swiss Radio studio in Lugano, with ECM founder Manfred Eicher producing. Uma Elmo reaffirms the observation about Bro’s work by London Jazz News that “there is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth.” Among the album’s highlights is opener “Reconstructing a Dream,” a darkly lyrical reverie. “To Stanko” is Bro’s hushed tribute to the late, great Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, who featured the guitarist in his quintet for the ECM album Dark Eyes. Another homage to a late elder is “Music for Black Pigeons,” which was given its evocative title by saxophone sage Lee Konitz. Listeners will recognize Henriksen’s whispering, poetic sound from his 2008 ECM album Cartography, as well as his collaborations for the label with Trio Mediaeval and Tigran Hamasyan. Rossy is well known to jazz fans on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly for his decade-plus tenure in Brad Mehldau’s career-making first trio. As for the leader, DownBeat aptly noted in its review of his previous ECM album, Bay of Rainbows, that “Bro’s guitar is luminous… his music both hypnotic and dramatic.”
1. RECONSTRUCTING A DREAM (Jakob Bro) 09:17
2. TO STANKO (Jakob Bro) 04:33
3. BEAUTIFUL DAY (Jakob Bro) 05:03
4. MORNING SONG (Jakob Bro) 06:55
5. HOUSEWORK (Jakob Bro) 11:05
6. MUSIC FOR BLACK PIGEONS (Jakob Bro) 07:54
7. SOUND FLOWER (Jakob Bro) 05:55
8. SLARAFFENLAND (Jakob Bro) 03:52
9. MORNING SONG (VAR.) (Jakob Bro) 07:07
Jakob Bro: Guitar
Arve Henriksen: Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet
Jorge Rossy: Drums
CONCERTS
October 19
Jakob Bro Porgy&Bess Vienna Austria
October 20
Jakob Bro MOMkult Budapest Hungary
November 09
Jakob Bro Village Vanguard New York, NY United States of America
November 10
Jakob Bro Village Vanguard New York, NY United States of America
November 11
Jakob Bro Village Vanguard New York, NY United States of America
November 12
Jakob Bro Village Vanguard New York, NY United States of America
November 13
Jakob Bro Village Vanguard New York, NY United States of America
November 14
Jakob Bro Village Vanguard New York, NY United States of America
“There is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth,” observed London Jazz News about Danish guitarist Jakob Bro’s trio with two kindred-spirit Americans: bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Joey Baron. This poetically attuned group follows its ECM studio album of 2016, Streams – which The New York Times lauded as “ravishing” – with what Bro calls “a dream come true,” an album recorded live in New York City, over two nights at the Jazz Standard. Bay of Rainbows rolls on waves of contemplative emotion as the three musicians explore five pieces from the guitarist’s catalog, with the gorgeous “Copenhagen” a favorite reprised from Gefion, Bro’s 2015 ECM release. Others – “Evening Song,” “Red Hook” and the volatile “Dug” – are recast intimately and elastically for trio after having been initially documented by larger ensembles. Bookending Bay of Rainbows are two versions of the richly melodic “Mild,” the abstracted second rendering illustrative of Bro and company’s ability to push and pull the music into mesmerizing new shapes, onstage and in the moment.
“Danish guitarist Jakob Bro creates magical music, impossible to categorize”, wrote Downbeat recently. On Returnings the magic is intensified as Bro and musical soul-mate Thomas Morgan reconnect with two living legends of European jazz, trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg and drummer Jon Christensen. It’s a wonderful combination: Bro’s watercolour guitar sounds, Mikelborg’s soft Milesian flugelhorn, Morgan’s impeccable choice of notes, and Christensen’s free-floating drumming . These components add up to one of the prettiest and subtlest jazz albums of recent times. Returnings was recorded in July 2016 at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio and produced by Manfred Eicher.
On his second leader album for ECM – following on from the prizewinning Gefion - Danish guitarist Jakob Bro continues to refine his trio project, with its emphases on melody, sound, space, layered textures and interaction. The rapport between Bro and Thomas Morgan (Bro calls him “my musical soul mate”) has become something extraordinary, and often guitarist and bassist develop improvisational ideas in parallel. There’s an historical aptness, too, in the choice of Joey Baron as the band’s new drummer, for Bro first encountered Morgan when the bassist was playing in Baron’s band a decade ago… On Streams Joey Baron dives into the music’s detail with obvious pleasure. This recording features five new Bro pieces: “Opal”, “Full Moon Europa”, “Shell Pink”, “Sisimiut” and “Heroines” (heard in both a trio version and a particularly lovely solo version). Completing the album’s repertoire is the freely improvised “PM Dream”, dedicated to the late Paul Motian. Jakob’s approach to melody acknowledges the influence of Motian, and both Bro and Morgan played in the late drummer’s ensembles .
Recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in November 2015 and produced by Manfred Eicher, Streams is issued on the eve of a major tour by the Bro-Morgan-Baron trio with dates in Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Ukraine and South Korea.
