Gefion (ECM)
Jakob Bro
Released February 6, 2015
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nbPgdTEaT3hfDww3VPznYS-qZRLcjY_kM
Spotify:
About:
Gefion, named for the Norse goddess associated with ploughing, prophecy and premonition, is the ECM leader debut of Danish guitarist Jakob Bro. Bro first recorded for ECM with Paul Motian on Garden of Eden in 2004, followed by Tomasz Stanko’s Dark Eyes album of 2009. The guitarist’s feeling for melody, sound-colour and atmosphere served him well in those contexts, as it does here in the realization of his own free floating ballads and drifting, spacious-yet-focused pieces. “Lucidity is in the air when guitarist Jakob Bro plays,” the late Danish journalist Ib Skovgaard wrote. “His music transcends genres. It’s beyond categories, a personal music following a track which is consistent with Bro’s constant search for melodic clarity in the songs”.
Gefion was recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in November 2013 and produced by Manfred Eicher. It introduces a group with US bassist Thomas Morgan and Norwegian drummer Jon Christensen, which has been a priority project for Jakob Bro in recent years. Bro views Thomas Morgan as a “soulmate in music”. As Craig Taborn once said of the bassist, nobody is more rigorous about holding onto the compositional fabric of a piece of music and honouring its intentions. In the stripped-to-essentials context of Gefion, the bassist is able to make his well-chosen notes say a great deal; Bro and Morgan thoughtfully explore the music together, buoyed and stimulated by the lapping waves of Jon Christensen’s drums and cymbals. Whether driving or detailing the music, Christensen plainly relishes the freedoms offered by the trio formation.
“Jon Christensen’s been a big inspiration to me from the beginning of my musical career,” says Bro. “Very early on I played with a Danish drummer who’d been house drummer at Tagskægget in Aarhus – a pendant to Jazz Club Montmartre in Copenhagen –in the 1960s. He was a big fan of Jon’s way of playing the drums, and introduced me to the records he was playing on. I quickly came to recognize how very unique and truly special Jon is.”
Bro first heard Thomas Morgan at New York club Tonic when the bassist was playing with Joey Baron’s band. In the same period, but not in the same line-ups, Bro and Morgan began working with Paul Motian: “Unfortunately we never got to play with Paul, the both of us together. I would have loved that. But around 2008 or 2009 I participated in a recording session in New York with the Danish piano player August Rosenbaum and Dan Weiss. Thomas Morgan was on the session. Since then he has played on almost all of my recordings and we’ve worked and toured extensively together.”
Jakob Bro’s trio with Thomas Morgan and Christensen played together for the first time at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival in 2012. Reviewing the event All About Jazz spoke of “three musicians bringing their very own way of sound making into a realm of listening that builds upon mutual musical confidence”. Subsequently the group has toured widely in Europe and Japan, and Gefion is launched with a further round of concerts in Denmark and a gig at Berlin’s B-Flat club. In April the trio plays in Portugal and at the ECM Label Night at the Jazzahead trade fair in Bremen. In July, Bro/Morgan/Christensen will perform at some of the summer jazz festivals; details soon at www.ecmrecords.com and Jakob’s web site www.jakobbro.com. In May, Bro and Morgan tour Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Denmark and Greenland with Jakob’s Balladeering project featuring Bill Frisell and Lee Konitz. And in autumn 2015 the Bro/Morgan/Christensen Trio returns to Japan.
Track Listing:
1. Gefion (Jakob Bro) 10:33
2. Copenhagen (Jakob Bro) 04:24
3. And They All Came Marching Out of the Woods (Jakob Bro) 04:31
4. White (Jakob Bro) 05:09
5. Lyskaster (Jakob Bro) 04:15
6. Airport Poem (Jakob Bro) 03:29
7. Oktober (Jakob Bro) 04:18
8. Ending (Jakob Bro) 02:47
Personnel:
Jakob Bro: guitar
Thomas Morgan: double bass
Jon Christensen: drums
Recorded November 2013, Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug
Cover Photo: Morten Delbæk
Design: Sascha Kleis
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Review:
Somewhere between John McLaughlin’s ethereal broodings and Bill Frisell’s kaleidoscopic soundscapes is where guitarist Jakob Bro begins Gefion. The album makes the case for a radically understated individual guitar voice even more explicit. Bro’s guitar occupies a kind of netherworld of subdued, almost dreamlike otherness. It’s a place outside of time. With material that’s seemingly bereft of drama, Bro’s esthetic challenges us to shift gears, perhaps pay closer attention. Gefion, his first as a leader for ECM, takes “balladeering” to another level alongside vet Jon Christensen on drums and bassist Thomas Morgan—two fine choices for a working band that can make you almost miss Bro’s work with Motian. A big part of what makes Gefion so enjoyable is Bro’s reserve, the way his “chops” are implied more than stated. Take a song like “Oktober,” a slow, dirge-like melody with an angular theme. The song floats in and lingers, then leaves. Similarly, “Airport Poem,” essentially a tone poem for Morgan that’s filled with space, finds notes gliding here and there amidst Bro’s simple refrains, like a nighttime jet blinking its landing-gear lights as it approaches the terminal. It’s quiet, with no commotion to speak of. By way of contrast, “And They All Came Marching Out Of The Woods” is downright perky, with Morgan going four to the bar, his bandmates valiantly tagging along. “Ending” rightly ends Gefion, the stringers playing in unison only to diverge, another dreamy march that finds Christensen’s drumming more explicit until there’s nothing left but Bro and his guitar.
John Ephland (DownBeat)
