Jakob Bro: Live at The Village Vanguard

Legendary guitarist Jakob Bro revitalized the pensive romanticism of the ECM Records sound with last year's Taking Turns, and continues his crusade in Live at the Village Vanguard. His strategy is simple: a diverse cast, both in style and generation, slavishly dedicated to a dynamic trajectory, like a viscous alloy rushing violent in an aged riverbed. In this case, the mold is the enduring memory of Paul Motian, chiefly represented by former band mate Joe Lovano, but haunting even Bro's original compositions.

The first track cakes a Motian composition, "Abacus" from his trio with Enrico Pieranunzi and Marc Johnson, between three originals. "Sound Creation Dug Abacus Pause," aside from a mouthful, is a loping, eerie battle of ghastly wills. "Sound Creation" is reminiscent of the swooning melancholy in Taking Turns, complete with soulful licks by Lovano's tenor and a deliciously disjointed bass duo by Larry Grenadier and Thomas Morgan. "Dug," though difficult to define chronologically, is noted by a sharp turn by the bass and Bro himself. Grenadier and Morgan meet into a cohesive, cinematic trembling, while the guitar grows percussive, snaking around the dual mallets of Jorge Rossy and Joey Baron. A shadowy climax is foretold, and met, in Motian's composition, which is gifted a gothic menace unlike previous iterations of the tune. AC's bass guitar flashes and burns underneath Bro's corrosive layering, then cycles back to Lovano's return, an elegiac lathe over the residing chatter.

On the B-side, two more Bro stand-outs: "Colors" and "Song to an Old Friend." A quick descent into cool mysticism defines the first, perhaps apparent in Bro's entire composing career, a strange battle between bop and the classical inflected ECM style that always waged at the heart of his experiments. These tensions are ably aggravated by Lovano in the second track, who soars contrary to his leader's moody drawl.

The C-and D-sides also invoke Motian directly with two cuts from his trio with Bill Frisell and Lovano himself, both with somber reverence. "Once Around the Park," another '90s cut, is mirrored by the band's own "Once Around the Room." Like the names would suggest, the latter is insular, intimate, a many-chambered arrangement of solos and clangy chatter. The former is expansive. Quick fingering from Rossy and Baron keep the performance mobile and urban, while Lovano and Bro are themselves like street performers, heard violently for an instant before fading to obscurity. In "Room," their crooning is stripped of accompaniment and forced into lonely abstraction. It's one of the more daring inversions in recent memory.

"Mumbo Jumbo" closes out the night. The composition is recounted like a group prayer. Not a silent prayer, with lofty humility and heads held low, but a prayer following a fire-and-pitchforks sermon. Drums and rhythm section lead a garrulous rumbling with Bro acting as blistering agitant. Motian's notably boppy, pleasant tune is defaced to one of searing emotion. One might call it misplaced, as it appears to end the record in rips and tears, but instead, it reflects the anguish of a remembrance, a violent reckoning with a man's passing and his music's remains, endeavored by an ensemble of admirers and friends alike. Bro's latest is a triumph because it opens itself to failure, and the strange inconsistencies that come with homage.

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