Label: ECM Records, 2021

Personnel - Jakob Bro: guitar; Arve Henriksen: trumpet; Jorge Rossy: drums.

The music of Danish jazz guitarist Jakob Bro has the ability of giving me inner peace, which is something that not every musician is apt to. His new ECM release, Uma Elmo, consists of nine pieces, old and new, that explore new avenues and create impressive atmospheres with quietly involving sounds and textures. Bro opts for the trumpet-guitar-drums format here, recording for the first time with the Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and the Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy. The album title refers to the middle names of his two children, with a newborn serving as inspiration as well as the current state of the world.

Having been included in the 2008 album The Stars Are All New Songs with the late Paul Motian, “Reconstructing a Dream” appears here surrounded by a crystalline aura, whose stillness veers from introspective to slightly brooding in the last segment. Bro’s fine loops are followed with minimal gestures by Rossy, whose playing invokes Motian, and the soaring lines of Henriksen, who also speaks clearly on the elegiac “To Stanko”, even when hushing, murmuring and crying. This piece, a dedication to the late trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, also involves classical-inspired guitar fingerpicking and understated percussion as part of its aesthetic concept.

Another dedication is “Music For Black Pigeons”, a piece written for the alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, with whom Bro used to have interesting conversations. Obeying to its own cadence, this number boasts a beautiful melody scattered throughout and a loose brushwork for a soft and fluid illumination.

Both “Beautiful Day” and “Slaraffenland” had been previously recorded, while “Morning Song” is a brand new mind-pacifier that sonically describes wide-open landscapes awakening for life. The trio seems to breathe in sync with the earth.

“Housework” is another great new composition. The group displays the same quietude and disposition for openness, circularity and immensity, but explores some different timbres, with the trumpeter emitting a droning vibration like a didgeridoo and the guitarist making a tasteful use of electronics and looped sequences.

Pronounced with an unshakeable serenity, Bro’s meditations are rich in both improvisation and discipline. An artistic enlightenment with so many small things to be appreciated. Like in life.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Reconstructing a Dream ► 02 - To Stanko ► 05 - Housework