Taking Turns Jakob Bro

• 1 Black Is All Colors at Once 06:18
• 2 Haiti 07:47
• 3 Milford Sound 05:03
• 4 Aarhus 03:40
• 5 Pearl River 06:45
• 6 Peninsula 05:35
• 7 Mar del plata 04:57
• Total Runtime 40:05

Info for Taking Turns

Recorded ten years ago in New York, and released now for the first time, Taking Turns is a snapshot of Jakob Bro’s music in a period of transition. In a chronological discography of Bro’s sessions, it would follow Gefion, the Danish guitarist’s leader debut for ECM, by a few months. Atmospherically and conceptually, it extends and rounds off work begun earlier with saxophonist Lee Konitz.

A major figure in jazz history from The Birth of the Cool onwards, Konitz came into Jakob Bro’s musical life in 2008, on the recommendation of Paul Motian, and contributed to a trilogy of albums – Balladeering, Time and December Song – issued on Bro’s own label. The association, Jakob says, changed his priorities. “I felt I had found a direction that worked for me when Lee started playing my pieces. That might seem obvious, taking the greatness of Konitz as an improviser into consideration, but for me it was a revelation. From Day One, Lee was quite freely interpreting my music, playing around the melodies, hinting at them, not necessarily playing them as written. And it made me think in a new way about how much music I should bring in, how much direction I should give, for the group sound to find its own natural balance and flow. That’s something I’ve been exploring ever since.”

On Taking Turns, Konitz, 86 years old at the time of the session, immediately brings his own sensibility to bear on “Black Is All Colors At Once”, with a searching alto solo rising above the interleaved arpeggios of Bro and Bill Frisell. There is a rare sighting of Lee on soprano sax on the rhythmically-pulsating “Haiti”, given momentum by another veteran with a distinguished past, Andrew Cyrille. Jakob first had the opportunity to play with Cyrille when the drummer was in Denmark with pianist Søren Kjӕrgaard: Bro joined them at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Cyrille’s long journey through many of jazz’s sub-genres has included extended explorations in the free zone and influential recordings including Dialogue of the Drums with fellow percussionist Milford Graves. Graves is referenced in the title of “Milford Sound” which also alludes to the fjord of the same name on New Zealand’s South Island, “a place of absolutely surreal beauty”, Bro says.

More prosaically, “Pearl River” is named for the Asian emporium in New York’s Chinatown, offering oriental household items at budget prices. “In student days, friends were always going off to the Pearl River Mart to buy ‘a nice lamp for the apartment’”, Bro recalls.

Here the tune is illuminated, after Konitz’s soliloquy, by rippling waves of guitars and drums, with pianist Jason Moran adding drama in the tune’s final minute. Of the session participants, Moran was the only musician with whom Bro had not previously worked.

“Pearl River” is also a piece that Paul Motian played live when Jakob was a member of his group. Like Bill Frisell before him, Bro honed his craft while working with Motian, and this shared experience has been one of the bonds between the two guitarists. “I remember going to see Paul and Bill and Joe Lovano every night at the Village Vanguard – a really special experience. We became friends even before we started playing together. I learned so much from Bill, and he has always been so supportive. He makes everyone sound good.”

The same might be said of bassist Thomas Morgan whose agile, inventive playing has been one of the near-constant factors in Bro’s group music of the last fifteen years. On the concluding “Mar del Plata”, which summons memories of touring through Argentina, Morgan has a strong central role, endeavoring to invest each bass note with meaning, and sounding like a young Charlie Haden almost, as the music canters toward the sunset.

“I’m Not Really so Impressed by the Guitar Playing; I’m More Interested in Hearing People Talking to Each Other on Their Instruments” (Jakob Bro)

Taking Turns was recorded in New York’s Avatar Studios in March 2014, and mixed at the Village Recording Studio in Copenhagen in August 2024. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

Jakob Bro, guitar
Lee Konitz, alto saxophone, soprano saxophone
Bill Frisell, guitar
Jason Moran, piano
Thomas Morgan, double bass
Andrew Cyrille, drums

Jakob Bro
(1978) is a guitarist, composer and ECM recording artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. His latest albums are “Strands”, a live recording from 2023 with Danish jazz masters Palle Mikkelborg and Marilyn Mazur, and the 2024 release “Taking Turns” with a star-studded cast featuring Lee Konitz, Andrew Cyrille, Jason Moran, Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan playing compositions by Jakob Bro.

His yearly stint for ECM Records also includes the deeply felt homage “Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian” (2022) co-lead by Joe Lovano and other highly acclaimed albums such as “Uma Elmo” (2021) with Arve Henriksen and Jorge Rossy; “Returnings” (2018) with Palle Mikkelborg, Thomas Morgan and Jon Christensen; and three trio albums “Bay of Rainbows” (2018), “Streams” (2017) and “Gefion” (2016) – produced by Manfred Eicher.

He is currently collaborating with Charles Lloyd, Midori Takada, Joe Lovano, Brian Blade, Jorge Rossy, Ambrose Akinmusire, Marilyn Crispell, Wadada Leo Smith, Andrew Cyrille, Larry Grenadier, Joey Baron, Thomas Morgan, Palle Mikkelborg, Marilyn Mazur, Anders Christensen, Anja Lechner, Arve Henriksen, Brussels Philharmonic and many more.

Jakob Bro has won the DownBeat Critics Poll in the Rising Star Guitarist category and received numerous honors including the Carl Prize, Danish Music Award, the Danish Arts Foundation Award and a nomination for the Nordic Council Music Prize for the trilogy: “Balladeering” (2009), “Time” (2011) & “December Song” (2013), which was released on his own label Loveland Records.

Jakob Bro is a former member of Paul Motian & The Electric Bebop Band (Garden of Eden, ECM – 2006) and of Tomasz Stanko’s Dark Eyes Quintet (Dark Eyes, ECM – 2009).

He has released 20 albums as a bandleader including musicians like Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Kenny Wheeler, Paul Bley, Chris Cheek, Thomas Morgan, Ben Street, Mark Turner, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Andrew D’Angelo, Chris Speed, George Garzone, Craig Taborn, Oscar Noriega, David Virelles, Jon Christensen, Jesper Zeuthen, Anders Christensen, Peter Laugesen, Kresten Osgood, Jakob Høyer, Nicolai Munch-Hansen, Jonas Westergaard, Søren Kjærgaard, Nikolaj Torp Larsen and many more.

“Danish guitarist Jakob Bro creates magical music, impossible to categorize or capture. His songs are best described as jewels revolving in mid-air, reflecting and refracting light,” writes Downbeat. “Based on an idea of the slow, simple melody and a nearly Buddhist ideal of relinquishing the ego, Jakob Bro has lifted jazz into a new future,” Danish newspaper Politiken adds. It is Bro’s conviction that “the music has to breathe. It’s important that a kind of organic conversation is taking place.”

His worldwide touring activities extend to venues and festivals across Japan, China, South Korea, Greenland, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, South Africa, USA and most of Europe.

Jakob Bro’s music and various ensembles are depicted in the award-winning film “Music for Black Pigeons” (directed by Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed), which premiered at the 79th Venice Biennale and has been featured at film festivals around the world.

This album contains no booklet.