Experience ECM-guitarist/composer Jakob Bro in a new collaboration with an international star in ambient and minimalist music, Midori Takada.
“Trying to put your finger on Jakob Bro’s guitar style can be like trying to describe the essence of air,” a critic once said about the Danish guitarist. Praised for his minimalist yet emotionally charged playing, he has released 16 albums as a bandleader and is a former member of Paul Motian’s Electric Bebop Band and of the Tomasz Stańko Quintet.
Midori Takada is a masterful Japanese composer and percussionist whose output over the past 40 years weaves through solo, group and theatrical practices. Her deep quests into traditional Asian and African percussive language are captured on a series of now highly sought after albums including her masterpiece Through The Looking Glass (1983/RCA) and Lunar Cruise (1990/Epic-Sony), both reissued in 2017.
Originally commissioned by Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, Midori Takada and Jakob Bro played together for the first time in 2022. Based on a shared musical vision the duo are currently expanding their collaboration with a series of improvised concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York, prominent European Concert Halls and culminating at the Japanese World Expo 2025 in Osaka.
“Though most of my musical roots are in jazz, I less and less see myself as a jazz player. I try to express myself with sound and have no ambition with my instrument other than to create unexplainable moments of beauty with my fellow collaborators. I see Midori Takada as someone who can do exactly this. Turn a moment of nothing into something.” – Jakob Bro
“Jakob Bro’s and Midori Takada’s focused music is precise and tight, but at the same time free and bigger than both of them” – Politiken
Download Press Photos:
Photos: Peter Adamik, Mike Højgaard and WRWTFWW Records
Midori Takada (b. 1951) is a masterful Japanese composer and percussionist whose output over the past 40 years weaves through solo, group and theatrical practices. Her deep quests into traditional Asian and African percussive language are captured on a series of now highly sought after albums including her masterpiece Through The Looking Glass (1983/RCA) and her collaboration with Masahiko Satoh Lunar Cruise (1990/Epic-Sony), both reissued in 2017.
In chime with the peak period ambient and Fourth World musics explored by Jon Hassell, Don Cherry and Brian Eno, but born of a distinctly Japanese ceremonial and meditative musical sensibility, her work has a crystalline quality that distills rhythms from around the world into minimalist instrumental dreamscapes.
To coincide with the reissues of the two albums, she has made a triumphant return to concert hall and festival stages worldwide including sold out performances at London Barbican, Paris Palais de Tokyo and Berlin Hebbel am Ufer. She has established a peerless reputation for her theatrical and deeply spiritual minimalist percussion performances, where virtuoso technique, acoustic sensibility, choreographed lighting and movement combine to create a completely unique and transformative listening experience for audiences.
Jakob Bro (b. 1978) is a guitarist, composer and ECM recording artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
He is currently collaborating with Joe Lovano, Midori Takada, Brian Blade, Charles Lloyd, Ambrose Akinmusire, Marilyn Crispell, Wadada Leo Smith, Andrew Cyrille, Joey Baron, Thomas Morgan, Jorge Rossy, Larry Grenadier, Palle Mikkelborg, Marilyn Mazur, Nils Petter Molvær, Anja Lechner, Arve Henriksen and many more.
Bro has won the DownBeat Critics Poll in the Rising Star Guitarist category and received numerous honors including the Carl Prize, the Danish Music Award, the Danish Arts Foundation Award and a nomination for the Nordic Council Music Prize.
He has released 16 records as a bandleader featuring musicians like Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Kenny Wheeler, Paul Bley and is a former member of Paul Motian & The Electric Bebop Band and Tomasz Stanko’s Dark Eyes Quintet.
Jakob Bro’s music and various ensembles are depicted in the film “Music for Black Pigeons” (directed by Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed), which premiered at the 79th Venice Biennale.
Video: Watch Andreas Koefoed’s short film “Jakob Bro meets Midori Takada” in full length: https://fb.watch/coVx2uLtSK
Photos: Jakob Bro meets Midori Takada debut at Pierre Boulez Saal 2022 https://jakobbro.com/web/gallery/midori-takada-jakob-bro/