Artist: Jakob Bro
Album: Taking Turns
Genre: Modern Creative, Contemporary Jazz
Label: ECM Records
Released: 2024
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Black Is All Colors at Once (Bro) - 6:18
- Haiti (Bro) - 7:47
- Milford Sound (Bro) - 5:03
- Aarhus (Bro) - 3:40
- Pearl River (Bro) - 6:45
- Peninsula (Bro) - 5:35
- Mar del Plata (Bro) - 4:57
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- Personnel:
- Jakob Bro, Bill Frisell - guitar
- Lee Konitz - alto saxophone, soprano saxophone
- Jason Moran - piano
- Thomas Morgan - double bass
- Andrew Cyrille - drums
Danish guitarist Jakob Bro leads an all-star ensemble, including guitarist Bill Frisell and the late legendary alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, on Taking Turns. Recorded by ECM founder Manfred Eicher in 2014, the album was one of Bro's first sessions for the label, but it was set aside in favor of releasing his 2015 trio debut for ECM, Gefion. Here, Bro is joined by the aforementioned Konitz, who passed away in 2020, which marks this as one of his last recordings. Along with Frisell, Bro's band is rounded out by bassist Thomas Morgan, pianist Jason Moran, and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Conceptually, the record works as a continuation of the Nordic Council Music Prize-nominated trilogy of albums Bro recorded in the 2010s with Konitz and Frisell -- Balladeering, Time, and December Song -- the latter of which also featured Morgan. Along with Konitz, if there is a secondary connective thread running through the album it is the memory of Paul Motian, the daring and influential drummer who died in 2011. Each of the musicians on Taking Turns either played with or had a creative connection to Motian; one of Bro's early appearances on record was as a member of Motian's band on 2006's Garden of Eden. In that sense, while Bro composed all of the songs on Taking Turns, it is less of a solo showcase and more of a warm, deeply interactive group collaboration. These are spare, hypnotic songs, but ones that are punctuated by moments of bright harmonic colorations. Bro and Frisell are particularly compatible, their lines often intertwining against each other like wind chimes in a soft breeze. Similarly, Moran, Morgan, and Cyrille offer their own textural undercurrents, as hushed piano chords shimmering against brushed cymbals and woody bass grooves. At the center of their sun-dappled interplay is Konitz, whose dusky, bittersweet alto lines have, as with all of Taking Turns, the quality of sunlight breaking through clouds after a storm.
Review by Matt Collar