Jakob Bro Trio

"Music wants to take its own direction. Our job is to follow it"! The Danish guitarist with the filigree playing is coming back to town. His latest ECM release "Uma Elmo" is currently causing a stir, just like its predecessors.

In the summer of 2014, I visited Jakob Bro in Copenhagen. In my youth, I had often traveled to the Danish capital during the jazz festival. At that time I was thrilled by the way the music was presented all over the city in many charming places and with what openness it was received by a wide audience. Jazz is something taken for granted in Denmark and also receives generous financial support from the state. 

Jakob Bro lived with his then pregnant wife near the central station in the Vesterbro district. The interior was stylishly Scandinavian, and photos on the wall told his story: "My father led a big band, in which I played the trumpet. But he was also a music teacher, so there were always students* at our house - there was always music at our house." As a teenager, Bro discovered Jimi Hendrix and with him the guitar for himself, then studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, as well as in Boston at Berklee College of Music and in New York at the New School.

I first noticed Jakob Bro in the band of drummer Paul Motian, on whose recording of the CD "Garden of Eden" for ECM Records he was in the studio in 2006. Bro himself said about this time: "Paul was probably my most important musical hero. The way he handled time and melody leading, but also the way he put his group together, was a great inspiration for my trio." 

Bro is one with his music, a quiet contemporary who composes moody, atmospheric and at the same time very reduced tracks. Often they contain a subtle earworm: "In my music I play a lot around the main melody of a title. My composition sets the framework for a song, but within that song so much can happen musically because a new layer is constantly added that expands the previous vocabulary. So you get to new places unconsciously as you play." 

This becomes clear in an early trilogy, which he released on his label Loveland. For these three albums "Balladeering", "Time" and "December Song" he had brought in another guitarist: Bill Frisell. He was also accompanied by Lee Konitz and, in 2009, on "Balladeering" by Paul Motian.

In 2015, Bro released his first album on ECM, recorded in a trio with Thomas Morgan and legendary drummer Jon Christensen: "The trio form allows me to concentrate entirely on my guitar playing." Four more ECM albums followed. This year in Leipzig, Jakob Bro will play with Larry Grenadier on bass, who in turn became known through Brad Mehldau's trio and is currently teaching in Basel. Joey Baron, who once played with Stan Getz, Art Pepper and Carmen McRae and has since accompanied many musicians as a versatile and sensitive drummer, will also be there.