Danish guitarist-composer Jakob Bro continues to redefine the sound of the guitar in small ensembles with the release of Uma Elmo, his fifth album as a leader for ECM. For this release, he presents a new trio featuring Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy. While Jakob had played with Rossy in the past, the three musicians had never played together before their arrival in Lugano to record. Without the beat of bass or drums, the trio plays in a shifting and often mesmerizing space, bringing out new facets in older Bro tunes as well as new materials.
Bro reaches back to his collaboration with Paul Motian thirteen years ago to reinterpret “Reconstructing a Dream,” while he pays tribute to other legendary collaborators with “To Stanko” for trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and “Music for Black Pigeons” for saxophone legend Lee Konitz. Jakob feels strongly that playing with talent a generation or more removed from his own has been crucial to his development, and he speaks at length about his time with all three of these departed masters.
Born in 1978 in a small town in Denmark, Jakob came to prominence with his time in Paul Motian’s groundbreaking Electric Bebop Band, and then followed that with a spot in Stanko’s Dark Eyes quintet. Since emerging as a leader in his own right, he has (and continues to) record with in the trio setting with Thomas Morgan and Joey Baron, and in quartets with Mark Turner, Joey Baron and Thomas Morgan, and with Palle Mikkelborg, Morgan and Rossy.
In Part One of this two part conversation, Jakob and I discuss the making of Uma Elmo (titled after the middle names of his two young children), his memories of getting his big break with Paul Motian and why the sound of even one note from Tomasz Stanko can move him. Musical selections in Part One include “To Stanko” from Uma Elmo.
