Jakob Bro / Joe Lovano: Once Around the Room

The thrumming double basses of Larry Grenadier and Thomas Morgan initiate the conversation. Then the scattered insistence of rhythm by drummers Joey Baron and Jorge Rossy enters, pushing Once Around the Room into consciousness with all the anticipation and hushed intent of an orchestra tuning before a performance. Airy clusters of guitar courtesy of Jakob Bro and electric bassist Anders Christensen introduce Joe Lovano's aching call summoning the spirit to make known "As It Should Be," the first of the saxophonist's two deeply realized compositions. It's a protean, trance inducing twelve-tone that swells out into Once Around the Room's larger hypnotic narrative.

Acolytes all of the late Paul Motian, Bro, who made his ECM debut on the drummer's Garden of Eden (ECM, 2006) and Lovano, who goes back nearly four decades with Motian's many creative iterations, lead Once Around A Room through a meditative investigation of the collective soul. The common voice we all speak in if only we'd bother to listen to one another. It is a needed affirmation not only to the memory and vitality of Motian but also to our need for one on one communication.

From the impressionistic resonance of "As It Should Be" emerges "Sound Creation," a collective improvisation that seances Motian's thrill for spontaneity. It's an orchestral meander, each player regarding the other, waiting on the other to complete his thought and then add his own. "For the Love of Paul," one of Lovano's more evocative invocations of the larger power, moves forward on Baron and Rossy's roiling and Christensen's undertow into a keening conversation between the two main players. Grenadier and Morgan then highlight the track with an intuitive call and response of their own.

Reminiscent of Lovano's many sessions with Motian and guitarist Bill Frisell, Bro's telling ballad "Song For An Old Friend" unfolds with unfettered grace like slow clouds across a sky lake. Spurred on by Baron and Rossy, "Drum Music," first heard on Motian's second album Jack of Clubs (Soul Note, 1984) revels in its many colors and positive charge. Once Around the Room then closes quietly with Bro's "Pause" another nod towards the folky textures of Frisell as the guitarist weaves between the basses, the drummers skitter and scat and Lovano prayerfully concludes. It is a beautiful thing.