Questions for Jakob

Hello, Jakob Bro!

Via Henning Bolte I discovered your  music around 2012, and since then I followed your ways. Gefion was my first album, and if I should take three favourites to the infamous desert island, they would be, in this moment of time, Returnings, Strands – and Taking Turns. 

So here come my questions. At the beginning of December I will review Taking Turns in the JazzFacts radio magazine, nearly 7 minutes long. The audio of my little feature  can be heard afterwards a very long time.  

I will cut and edit your answers, so you can make them  as long or short as you like. Maybe, it can all happen within 8 days… and after all this radio work will be done, I’ll be in my old town in Dortmund, on Dec. 4 to hear you with Arve and Jorge!

As a preparation for these questions, I listened twice to Taking Turns yesterday, and for a second time I saw the documentary Music For Black Pigeons. Well, it was a great afternoon. So here we go: 

• Produced in 2014, Taking Turns  was in some ways the follow-up of December Song, with Jason Moran instead of Craig, and Andrew Cyrille. At that point in time you had already made Gefion with Manfred, who, as I think, is not present during the Taking Turns recording. (Or was he?) Now, in retrospect, how do you look back on these one or two days of making the album in NYC with a line-up that, in this constellation, never met before or after again. Do the recordings of Taking Turns somehow exist in a bubble, do you see them as an extension of December Song? Or what makes this session  stand apart?

• How did the musicians of this one time band „learned“ the new compositions? With notation (there are often papers with notes in the documentary)? Have there been detailed notations with a bit of freedom to improvise, or how did you introduce these compositions to the band? 

• In the case of Lee Konitz: did he just got to know the basic melody, and then act as a free agent on the music played? His playing is simply wonderful.

• In the case of Jason Moran and Thomas Morgan: it is such a joy to listen to both of them  finding the right spaces / moments for their impacts… in the case of Jason, it sounds he is soloing and accompanying at the same time. Both musicians constantly surprise here. Not that i did expect anything else:) Can you remember a certain moment? 

• At one point in the film, Lee asked: well, are these pieces folk songs? Now looking at the titles, one  could really think of „folk tunes“ refering to different parts of the world? Even „Milford Sound“ refers to „a place in New Zeeland“….. How do you look at this choice of the seven compositions? Somehow i don‘t think they just lay around? Has there been a „landscape feeling“ in some of the pieces?

• Listening to the album, it is such a captivating melange of textures. As a listener you can let your attention be wandering to the single instruments, to the overall sound….   Now, most of these guys know your music very well. Anyway, it would not surprise me if you kind of announced to them something like: let the melodies be as important as the atmosphere!  (Or they know that anyway):) 

• On a piece like „Haiti“ there is this love for the simple melody, returning again and again… but so much happens between the beginning and  the end of that track, sometime it seems to be on the verge of „rocking“ and „grooving“…..can you give some insights into this piece?

• The last piece „mar de plata“ … the press info says: „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.“ When composing did you really have „Argentinian memories“ in your mind that somehow entered the music? Or did you find this coennection later, in the mixing process? And on this track Lee Konitz is not playing, the only time on the album…. Any reason for that? Some thoughts from the back of your mind about this track would be nice…and I know: it‘s been a long time ago!

Thank you for doing this, 

Thank you for the music,

Best wishes, Michael Engelbrecht!