Uma Elmo

This album, composed by Danish guitarist Jakob Bro, is an antithesis to fidget culture. It resets listening, and exhumes a quiet concentration that’s so often neglected. — Jazzwise, March 2021, 3 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 23rd Apr 2021
Catalogue No: 3542716
Label: ECM

Presto Recording of the Week

12th February 2021
Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2021

1. Reconstructing a Dream

2. To Stanko

3. Beautiful Day

4. Morning Song

5. Housework

6. Music for Black Pigeons

7. Sound Flower

8. Slaraffenland

9. Morning Song (Var.)

About
Reviews
Explore

About

Recording of the Week, Jakob Bro - Uma Elmo

12th February 2021

Jakob Bro's new trio brings us a more abstracted version of the Danish electric guitarist's sound, with an album that serves as a personal document of his past year.

With Uma Elmo, his fifth album as a leader for ECM, Danish guitarist Jakob Bro presents a new trio featuring Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy.

Astonishingly, given the trio's musical synergy, the first time these three musicians ever performed together was for the album's sessions at the Swiss Radio studio in Lugano, with ECM founder Manfred Eicher producing.

Uma Elmo reaffirms the observation about Bro's work by London Jazz News that "there is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth." Among the album's highlights is opener "Reconstructing a Dream," a darkly lyrical reverie. "To Stanko" is Bro's hushed tribute to the late, great Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, who featured the guitarist in his quintet for the ECM album Dark Eyes. Another homage to a late elder is "Music for Black Pigeons," which was given its evocative title by saxophone sage Lee Konitz.

Listeners will recognize Henriksen's whispering, poetic sound from his 2008 ECM album Cartography, as well as his collaborations for the label with Trio Mediaeval and Tigran Hamasyan. Rossy is well known to jazz fans on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly for his decade-plus tenure in Brad Mehldau's career-making first trio.

As for the leader, DownBeat aptly noted in its review of his previous ECM album, Bay of Rainbows, that "Bro's guitar is luminous... his music both hypnotic and dramatic."

Jakob Bro: guitar

Arve Henriksen: trumpet, piccolo trumpet

Jorge Rossy: drums

Press:

"The music is gentle, atmospheric, lyrical and ultimately very beautiful." - LondonJazzNews

Reviews

March 2021

This album, composed by Danish guitarist Jakob Bro, is an antithesis to fidget culture. It resets listening, and exhumes a quiet concentration that’s so often neglected.

May 2021

As might be expected of such a mix of talent and artistry, the sum effect is abundant with airy and liquid grace, as if evoking the title of the opener, “Reconstructing A Dream.”

12th February 2021

Bro’s approach to music on Uma Elmo is not drastically different with this new trio; although, while 2016’s Streams could have a melodic track like ‘Heroines’ with a distinct head melody and readable rhythm - perhaps more conventional as far as guitar-led albums go for ECM jazz - the works on Uma Elmo are much more ambient and freeform. There are still shades of the moodier sides of Bro’s previous work, nonetheless.

Uma Elmo

Contents

Recording of the Week, Jakob Bro - Uma Elmo

Download queue

Uma Elmo

Vinyl Record

Other available formats

Contents

Download queue