Danish composer-guitarist Jakob Bro gathered a transatlantic all-star ensemble featuring spiritual jazz master Charles Lloyd, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Jorge Rossy on Bjerge, Strand—a hidden gem album set for release on Loveland Music and brought to life in a once-in-a-lifetime concert in Copenhagen.
Three winters ago, Jakob Bro invited Charles Lloyd to make a recording with him in The Village in Copenhagen along with Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy, the deeply attuned rhythm section that for two decades refined the piano trio with Brad Mehldau.
This previously unreleased session took place around the time Jakob Bro was touring Europe with Charles Lloyd and Larry Grenadier in support of Lloyd’s acclaimed album The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow. Now, the session is finally being prepared for release, and this extraordinary collaboration will be brought to life for the first and only time at Copenhagen’s Loveland Music Festival.
The album Bjerge, Strand was recorded and produced over two days at The Village Recording in Copenhagen and features ten tracks—half the songs composed by Jakob Bro, half by Charles Lloyd, with the two artists joining forces to co-write the epic hymn “Peace Song,” plus “Yahllah” written by Paul Motian.
In recent years, it has been exceedingly rare for Charles Lloyd to appear as a featured artist on another artist’s album, and his presence here should be seen in the context of his ongoing collaboration with Jakob Bro and Larry Grenadier.
Listen/save: https://lnk.to/BjergeStrand
Background
Charles Lloyd is an NEA Jazz Master and recipient of the French l’Ordre Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Voted Down Beat magazine’s Jazzman of the year in 1967, and again in 2023 Artist of the Year for his current body of work – the arc of his contribution to this artform and the depth of his expression reflects a lifetime of experience.
Charles Lloyd was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 15, 1938. Like New Orleans, 400 miles to the south on the Mississippi, Memphis has a rich river culture and musical heritage saturated in blues, gospel and jazz. Lloyd’s ancestry of African, Cherokee, Mongolian, and Irish reflects a similar rich culture. He was given his first saxophone at the age of 9, and was riveted to 1940’s radio broadcasts by Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. As a teenager Lloyd played jazz and was a sideman for several blues greats.
Classical music also exerted a strong pull on the young Lloyd. In 1956 he left Memphis for Los Angeles to earn a degree in music at USC. While his days were spent in academia, Lloyd spent nights getting educated on the job in L.A.’s jazz clubs, playing with Ornette Coleman, Billy Higgins, Scott La Faro, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson and others. In 1960 Lloyd was invited to become music director of Chico Hamilton’s group when Dolphy left to join Charles Mingus’s band. Lloyd later joined the Cannonball Adderley Sextet in 1964-1966.
It was his own album Forest Flower, however, that would cement Charles Lloyd’s status as a legend. He was among the first jazz musicians to sell more than a million copies of a recording, thanks to the 1967 live album Forest Flower, featuring a then very young Keith Jarrett, Cecil McBee and Jack DeJohnette, whom Lloyd would later bring with him to Europe.
At the height of his career, in 1970, Charles Lloyd more or less withdrew from the jazz scene. During this period he immersed himself in Transcendental Meditation and played occasionally with The Beach Boys both on their studio recordings and as a member of their touring band.
Several years later, Lloyd returned to performing, first in collaboration with Michel Petrucciani, with whom he released A Night in Copenhagen, and later through a series of acclaimed releases on ECM and subsequently Blue Note Records, working with artists including Billy Higgins, Zakir Hussain, Jon Christensen, Bill Frisell, Larry Grenadier, and Jason Moran.
Jakob Bro (b. 1978) has released more than 25 albums for ECM and Loveland Music as a bandleader. He came into prominence on the international jazz scene after recording and touring with Paul Motian, Tomasz Stanko, Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, Midori Takada, Palle Mikkelborg, Jon Christensen, and others. Jakob Bro’s various ensembles are depicted in the award-winning film Music for Black Pigeons (directed by Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed), which premiered at the 79th Venice Biennale and has been featured at film festivals around the world.
Larry Grenadier’s history with Charles started in 1999 with “The Water Is Wide” on ECM through to the 2024 award winning “The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow” album on Blue Note. Jakob Bro had been a special guest with Charles Lloyd Sky Quartet with Larry Grenadier at Jazz in Marciac and Sea Jazz L’Estarit Festival as well as Charles’ Ocean Trio at Jazztopad Festival and Pierre Boulez Saal around the time of the Copenhagen Sessions for “Bjerge, Strand.”
Jorge Rossy is internationally recognised as one of the most influential drummers of his generation. The Spanish drummer and multi-instrumentalist has toured with legends such as Charlie Haden, Wayne Shorter, Lee Konitz, Carla Bley and Joe Lovano, and his sideman work includes over 180 recordings, including a pivotal role as a longtime member of the Brad Mehldau Trio.
About the Copenhagen session
After a decade of touring the world with his ECM trio, Jakob Bro, when given the opportunity to form a new trio in 2019, chose two like-minded musicians, Larry Grenadier and Jorge Rossy, both of whom appeared with Bro on the Paul Motian tribute album Once Around the Room (recorded at the same Village Studio). Paul Motian in fact replaced Jack DeJohnette in The Charles Lloyd Quartet on their tour of Southeast Asia in 1968, so his spirit also carries through into this new collaboration, where they also perform a single Motian composition, “Yahllah.”
In recent years, it has been exceedingly rare for Charles Lloyd to appear as a featured artist on another artist’s album, and his presence here should be seen in the context of his ongoing collaboration with Jakob Bro and Larry Grenadier.
The album Bjerge, Strand was recorded and produced over two days at The Village Recording in Copenhagen and features ten tracks—half the songs composed by Jakob Bro, half by Charles Lloyd, with the two artists joining forces to co-write the epic hymn “Peace Song.”
“There were so many moments that I look back on, and I feel very grateful for the music. In this session we did only one take of each song, as far as I remember. Then you go back and listen to it collectively, which is always a joy, especially in this case—to find out what actually happened during that six- to fifteen-minute span of a take, and to really get to know the music.
I love the way Charles Lloyd is playing on this album. Some of the songs are very quiet pieces, and when we listened back, Charles said he felt that he sounded different from the way he had on other recordings, and he was very happy with that,” says Bro.
“The recording with Charles, Larry and Jorge was something I never thought would happen in my life. Then it happened—we recorded it—and we have one concert as well. So we did all the music once in the studio, and now we are going to perform it once here in Copenhagen.”
Loveland Music Festival takes place November 30–December 2, 2026 with special guest Charles Lloyd and the extraordinary line-up of Bill Frisell, Zeena Parkins, Craig Taborn, Jakob Bro, Larry Grenadier, Jorge Rossy, Skúli Sverrisson, Veslemøy Narvesen and more.
The album Bjerge, Strand releases November 13, 2026 on a limited-edition double vinyl in a gatefold cover with artwork by Tal R.
Contact:
Publicist – Matt Merewitz, Fully Altered Media, matt@fullyaltered.com
Distribution – Mads Bordinggaard Christensen, Loveland Music, mbc@rillbar.dk