Taking Turns

Taking Turns, recorded in New York’s Avatar Studio a decade ago, finds Danish guitarist Jakob Bro joined by a multi-generational cast of improvisers, highly distinctive players all. Lee Konitz, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Frisell, Jason Moran and Thomas Morgan lend their energies to a session that bypasses conventions of the “all-star” band and puts the emphasis on teamwork.

The fourth and final album of Jakob Bro and Lee Konitz, Taking Turns is recorded after the celebrated Balladeering-Time-December Song trilogy and dedicated to the musical kinship, the torch that passes on from generation to generation.

Featured artists: Jakob Bro, Bill Frisell: guitars; Lee Konitz: alto and soprano saxophones;  Jason Moran: piano; Thomas Morgan: double bass; Andrew Cyrille: drums.

Listen/buy: https://ECM.lnk.to/TakingTurns

Recorded ten years ago in New York, and released now for the first time, Taking Turns is a snapshot of Jakob Bro’s music in a period of transition. In a chronological discography of Bro’s sessions, it would follow Gefion, the Danish guitarist’s leader debut for ECM, by a few months. Atmospherically and conceptually, it extends and rounds off work begun earlier with saxophonist Lee Konitz. 

A major figure in jazz history from The Birth of the Cool onwards, Konitz came into Jakob Bro’s musical life in 2008, on the recommendation of Paul Motian, and contributed to a trilogy of albums – Balladeering, Time and December Song – issued on Bro’s own label.  The association, Jakob says, changed his priorities. “I felt I had found a direction that worked for me when Lee started playing my pieces.  That might seem obvious, taking the greatness of Konitz as an improviser into consideration, but for me it was a revelation. From Day One, Lee was quite freely interpreting my music, playing around the melodies, hinting at them, not necessarily playing them as written.  And it made me think in a new way about how much music I should bring in, how much direction I should give, for the group sound to find its own natural balance and flow. That’s something I’ve been exploring ever since.”

On Taking Turns,  Konitz, 86 years old at the time of the session, immediately brings his own sensibility to bear on “Black Is All Colors At Once”, with  a searching alto solo  rising above the interleaved arpeggios of Bro and Bill Frisell. There is a rare sighting of Lee on soprano sax on the rhythmically-pulsating “Haiti”, given momentum by another veteran with a distinguished past, Andrew Cyrille.  Jakob first had the opportunity to play with Cyrille when the drummer was in Denmark with pianist Søren Kjӕrgaard:  Bro joined them at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival.  Cyrille’s long journey through many of jazz’s sub-genres has included extended explorations in the free zone and influential recordings including Dialogue of the Drums with fellow percussionist Milford Graves. Graves is referenced in the title of “Milford Sound” which also alludes to the fjord of the same name on New Zealand’s South Island, “a place of absolutely surreal beauty”, Bro says. 

More prosaically, “Pearl River” is named for the Asian emporium in New York’s Chinatown, offering oriental household items at budget prices. “In student days, friends were always going off to the Pearl River Mart to buy ‘a nice lamp for the apartment’”, Bro recalls. 

Here the tune is illuminated, after Konitz’s soliloquy, by rippling waves of guitars and drums, with pianist Jason Moran adding drama in the tune’s final minute.  Of the session participants, Moran was the only musician with whom Bro had not previously worked. 

“Pearl River” is also a piece that Paul Motian played live when Jakob was a member of his group.  Like Bill Frisell before him, Bro honed his craft while working with Motian, and this shared experience has been one of the bonds between the two guitarists. “I remember going to see Paul and Bill and Joe Lovano every night at the Village Vanguard – a really special experience. We became friends even before we started playing together.  I learned so much from Bill, and he has always been so supportive. He makes everyone sound good.”

The same might be said of bassist Thomas Morgan whose agile, inventive playing has been one of the near-constant factors in Bro’s group music of the last fifteen years.  On the concluding “Mar del Plata”, which summons memories of touring through Argentina, Morgan has a strong central role, endeavoring to invest each bass note with meaning, and sounding like a young Charlie Haden almost, as the music canters toward the sunset. 

Taking Turns was recorded in New York’s Avatar Studios in March 2014, and mixed at the Village Recording Studio in Copenhagen in August 2024. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

CD/digital in November 2024. LP in January 2025 via ECM Records.