Studio Masters

Jakob Bro – Uma Elmo (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:45 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

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.”
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Jakob Bro – Streams (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 48:34 minutes | 841 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

Streams is the second ECM album from Danish guitarist Jakob Bro as leader, featuring his pedigreed American trio members: bassist Thomas Morgan is known for his work with Paul Motian and John Abercrombie while drummer Joey Baron often backs Bill Frisell and John Zorn. Bro composed all the songs himself except for one track written by the three musicians.
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Jakob Bro – Returnings (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 41:45 minutes | 785 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

“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 an inspired combination: Bro’s watercolour guitar sounds, Mikkelborg’s soft Milesian lugelhorn, 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.

The theme of “returnings” is central. The album opens with a new version of “Oktober”, picking up the story from Bro’s album ‘Gefion’. In recent years, Jakob’s trio with Thomas Morgan and Joey Baron has, happily, gained a strong following. Meanwhile, the guitarist had also been looking for a context in which to continue his association with Jon Christensen ? which ‘Returnings’ provides. It also reunites Christensen with Palle Mikkelborg for the first time on ECM since Terje Rypal’s ‘Vossabrygg’ (recorded in 2003).

“Returnings” was recorded in July 2016 at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio and produced by Manfred Eicher.
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Jakob Bro – Gefion (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:46 minutes | 752 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

Gefion is Danish guitarist Jakob Bro’s first ECM album as leader, following recordings for the label as sideman with Paul Motian and Tomasz Stanko. Like the work of those masters Bro’s balladeering distils a sense of jazz history in its specific and highly personal atmospheres. The open forms of Bro’s compositions leave plenty of space for his companions – drum legend Jon Christensen and creative bassist-of-the-moment Thomas Morgan – to make their statements, interactively and in parallel. And there is space too for the listener’s imagination to follow the flow and the delicate melodic tracery of Bro’s electric guitar in this thoughtful and poetic album. Gefion was recorded in Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in November 2013 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
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