Gefion

Jakob Bro, Thomas Morgan, Jon Christensen

CD18,90 add to cart
LP24,90 out of print
EN / DE

"Gefion" is Danish guitarist Jakob Bro’s first ECM album as leader, following recordings for the label as sideman with Paul Motian and Tomasz Stanko. Like the work of those masters Bro’s balladeering distils a sense of jazz history in its specific and highly personal atmospheres. The open forms of Bro’s compositions leave plenty of space for his companions – drum legend Jon Christensen and creative bassist-of-the-moment Thomas Morgan – to make their statements, interactively and in parallel. And there is space too for the listener’s imagination to follow the flow and the delicate melodic tracery of Bro’s electric guitar in this thoughtful and poetic album. "Gefion" was recorded in Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in November 2013 and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Gefion ist das erste ECM-Album des dänischen Gitarristen Jakob Bro als Leader, nach Alben mit Paul Motian und Tomasz Stanko, auf denen Bro als Sideman vertreten war. Wie die Arbeiten dieser Meister verströmt auch Bros Balladenspiel in seinen speziellen und sehr persönlichen Stimmungen ein tiefes Bewusstsein der Jazzgeschichte.
Die offenen Formen von Bros Kompositionen lassen seinen Mitspielern – Schlagzeuglegende Jon Christensen und den kreativen Bassisten der Stunde, Thomas Morgan – reichlich Raum für ihre Statements, ob interaktiv oder parallel. Und es bleibt ebenfalls Raum für die Vorstellungskraft des Hörers, dem Fluss und dem delikaten Melodien-Flechtwerk von Bros elektrischer Gitarre auf diesem gedankenvollen und poetischen Album zu folgen. Gefion wurde im November 2013 im Rainbow Studio in Oslo aufgenommen und von Manfred Eicher produziert.
Featured Artists Recorded

November 2013, Rainbow Studio, Oslo

Original Release Date

06.02.2015

  • 1Gefion
    (Jakob Bro)
    10:33
  • 2Copenhagen
    (Jakob Bro)
    04:24
  • 3And They All Came Marching Out Of The Woods
    (Jakob Bro)
    04:30
  • 4White
    (Jakob Bro)
    05:09
  • 5Lyskaster
    (Jakob Bro)
    04:14
  • 6Airport Poem
    (Jakob Bro)
    03:28
  • 7Oktober
    (Jakob Bro)
    04:17
  • 8Ending
    (Jakob Bro)
    02:46
Much is made of the difference between European and American Jazz, but the most interesting players are often those with a foot on each shore […] A disciple of Bill Frisell’s twanging, glowing guitar sound, Bro was a member of Paul Motian’s influential Electric Bebop band, and it is Motian’s sparseness and sense of space that dominates here. Christensen and first-call New York bassist Thomas Morgan (another Motian alumnus) are equal partners in a riveting exchange of ideas poised between Europe and America, hovering on the edge of abstraction without ever falling in.
Cormac Larkin, Irish Times
 
The combination of Bro’s spacious, multi layered guitar sound, with Morgan’s natural, woody bass and Christensen’s crisp, ethereal drums make for an almost mystical, meditative listening experience. Bro, Morgan and Christensen create landscapes of sound that are achingly beautiful, sparse, yet full bodied at the same time.
Mike Gates, UK Vibe
 
‘Gefion’s’ dedicatee, the late Ib Skovgaard, once wrote ‘lucidity is in the air when guitarist Jakob Bro plays’, and, with this sense of clarity, Bro’s first ECM album as leader takes wing. The first sounds emerge gradually during some three minutes of introduction, and even when the full trio arrives, the harmonic changes seem to happen organically, by mutual consensus, not because a bar line has passed. […] ‘Gefion’does not reveal its secrets quickly, and there is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth. Absence is as powerful as presence for Bro; each phrase is perfectly plucked from the ether.
Jon Carvell, London Jazz News
 
Jakob Bro hat mit dem kalifornischen Kontrabassisten Thomas Morgan und der norwegischen Drummer-Legende Jon Christensen eine Sound-Sprache entwickelt, die sich dem meditativen Grundton sensibel anpasst […] Bros ballastfreie Gitarrenwolken, Morgans rollender Bass, Christensens sanfter, aber entschiedener Drum-Druck – das bürgt für pure Harmonie.
Matthias Inhoffen, Stereoplay
 
Bro has been developing a fascinating voice on his own. Here he reaches new heights on his quietly powerful ECM debut as a leader, which finds him in empathic connection with bassist Thomas Morgan and ECM mainstay Jon Christensen on drums. ‘Gefion’, named for a Norse goddess linked with prophecy and harvest, is meditative and mesmerizing, working its sonic approaches and musical strategies to painterly and poetic ends.
Josef Woodard, Jazziz
 
‘Gefion’ is an important album […] Shards of folkish melody reveal themselves as the rhythm section swirls around and underneath – Morgan inserting his own LaFaro-worthy asides and occasionally keeping time, Christensen dusting the floor à la Motian […] In Bro, new listeners will identify Bill Frisell’s shimmery tone and textural gentility, but the comparisons end there. The younger guitarist homes in on atmosphere with an inesitiy approaching David Torn’s.
Evan Haga, Jazz Times (Editor’s Pick
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.
YEAR DATE VENUE LOCATION
2025 October 09 Bimhuis Amsterdam, Netherlands
2025 October 10 Jazzhall Hamburg, Germany
2025 October 11 Maison de la Radio et de la Musique Paris, France
2025 October 12 Kulturzentrum Dieselstraße Esslingen, Germany
2026 March 13 Kultur Im Esel e.V. Einbeck, Germany
2026 March 16 Stadthaus Ulm, Germany