By Don Phipps

On their album Strands, Guitarist Jakob Bro and his cohorts,
percussionist Marilyn Mazur and trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, supply up a
meditative panorama of music which evokes purple desert sunrises, blue ocean
vistas, and glowing celestial skies. The album, recorded stay on the
Danish Radio Live performance Corridor in February 2023 is a testomony to collaborative
enjoying, as every musician brings a mixed sensitivity to coloring and
phrases.

For probably the most half Bro takes an understated method. It is just in his and
Mikkelborg ‘s composition “Returnings” that he initiatives a forceful trendy
and piercing line. Elsewhere, nevertheless, he stays low key, creating an air of
intimacy with the notes he generates. Mikkelborg additionally stays with a reserved
method, preferring lengthy legato notes that completely seize the music’s
broad themes. However the actual star right here – if such a colloquial expression can
be proffered – is Mazur, who makes use of her percussion to create rigidity, foment
movement, and add splashes of shiny colours to the usually wide-angle
panoramas.

What strikes one most about this music is its ebb and stream. It paints the
reddish glow of a morning dawn over a rocky desert canyon, the quiet
solitude of a darkish nook, or the glowing embers of the evening sky. There’s
each pleasure and unhappiness right here, a delicate complexity obscured inside delicate
traces.

On his composition “Strands,” Bro begins with a pastoral theme and
Mikkelborg reiterates it. One feels immersed within the sound – like laying at
the underside of a pool and staring up by way of the water at the sky
shimmering above. The impact is intimate magnificence. An interplay happens right here
in its personal language – a language shared by every of the three musicians.
Mazur’s cosmic percussion concludes the piece with whale-like howls.

Bro and Mikkelborg started enjoying collectively over a decade in the past. They started
their collaboration with Mazur in 2020. Bro mentioned of the collaboration, “It
appeared a pure extension of the music, which has continued to develop
since then…. There may be air within the music, nice freedom, and a shared need
to create one thing that can’t essentially be defined however felt.” True
that. The sentiments right here are all the time real, by no means contrived, and contact the
deepest components of no matter one considers the material of actuality.