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Jakob Bro: Hymnotic/Salmodisk
by Jakob Baekgaard
The exploration of different musical formats has been one of the defining characteristics of Danish guitarist Jakob Bro for a long time. It makes perfect sense when you think about Bro's approach to music. He is an artist that likes to work with different voices to see what they can bring to the music. Back in 2008, Bro introduced a nonet that was documented on the live-recording White Rainbow (Loveland Records, 2008). Many of the musicians that ...
read moreJakob Bro: December Song
by Henning Bolte
December Song is the final part of a trilogy which started with Balladeering (2009) and continued with Time (2011). It started with the fivesome of Jakob Bro himself, Bill Frisell, Lee Konitz, Ben Street and the late Paul Motian. When Time was recorded in September 2011 at Avatar, Thomas Morgan subbed for Ben Street. Paul Motian could not make it anymore. He passed away soon after. Notwithstanding he can be sensed on both Time and December Song very clearly. To ...
read moreBro/Knak: Bro/Knak
by John Kelman
Following three consistently fine recordings as a leader--2009's The Stars Are All New Songs Vol. 1, 2010's Balladeering and 2011's Time (all on the Danish guitarist's own Loveland imprint)--in addition to international visibility gained through work with Paul Motian on the drummer's Garden of Eden (ECM, 2006) and trumpeter Tomasz Stańko's Dark Eyes (ECM, 2010), Jakob Bro takes a considerable detour with Bro/Knak, a collaboration with Danish electronic musician Thomas Knak. Bro's laconic and, perhaps, more to the point melancholic ...
read moreJakob Bro: Time
by Jakob Baekgaard
Hearing music is a journey towards discovering the world anew. If anything, this is a philosophy that the young Danish guitarist Jakob Bro has taken to heart. Throughout a career that has seen him playing in a wide range of constellations, among them groups led by trumpeter Tomasz Stańko and the late drum legend Paul Motian, Bro has never lost his intuitive approach to making music. No matter who he is playing with, there is never a sense of redundancy; ...
read moreJakob Bro: Balladeering
by Jakob Baekgaard
Throughout the process of recording Balladeering, Danish guitarist Jakob Bro was followed closely by filmmaker Sune Blicher, who documented the sessions, which took place at the famous Avatar studios in New York, capturing the poetry of the music in pregnant images. A recurrent motif in the movie is musicians engrossed in listening, and this particular framing also finds its way into the photos by Robert Lewis that grace the album, becoming a metaphor for the music itself and the spirit ...
read moreJakob Bro: The Stars Are All New Songs Vol. 1
by Jakob Baekgaard
The transition from promising talent to well-established artist isn't always easy and some musicians seem doomed to be placed in the eternal category of “interesting new voice." Clearly that is not the case with young Danish guitarist Jakob Bro, who has become one of the leading stylists in a new generation of jazz guitarists that include his fellow players in Paul Motian's band, Steve Cardenas and Ben Monder.Bro's evolution as an artist has been a journey towards simplicity. ...
read moreJakob Bro: Pearl River
by Jakob Baekgaard
Sometimes, finding a good jazz record is a bit like fishing: either you catch something or you don't. The search is always on for that particular phrase, beat or tune that will transport the mind to a state of bliss: the state called jazz. Coming across an album like Pearl River seems like a lucky find. Like finding a pearl in a river. But there's more than plain luck involved in the case of Danish guitarist Jakob Bro. ...
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