A glimpse of a feeling

With his guitar, looper and effects, Danish guitarist Jakob Bro captures moods in dreamy improvisations. His three recent and new releases are remarkable reflections on the mystery of music.

- By Bill Milkowski

Through the course of five evocative ECM albums, Danish guitarist Jakob Bro has forged a distinctive musical identity with a deft fingerstyle approach to his instrument, along with a penchant for delicate lyricism and intuitive flights that often take him into the unknown. Making subtle use of looping technology, backward effects and the occasional onslaught of distortion has allowed him to go from soothing introspection to translucent soundscapes to angular skronking, sometimes within the same piece. The 44-year-old sonic explorer made his ECM debut on drummer Paul Motian's 2006 album Garden of Eden, which featured the three guitars of Ben Monder, Steve Cardenas and Bro blending brilliantly in the mix. He appeared three years later on Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko's darkly introspective 2009 outing on ECM, Dark Eyes, then debuted as a leader on ECM in 2015 with Gefion, featuring bassist Thomas Morgan, a frequent collaborator of Bill Frisell's, and veteran Norwegian drummer Jon Christensen, a member of Keith Jarrett's celebrated European Quartet of the 1970s.

"It was really a big step when I went from doing my own records on my own label [Loveland Records] to recording for Manfred Eicher on ECM," Bro says. "I wasn't even sure I wanted to present a guitar trio on my first album with him, but he really helped me by stepping up and saying, 'You have a voice on the instrument."