“When we walked out on stage it felt like a homecoming,” says Jakob Bro of this texturally spacious and emotionally charged live recording from Copenhagen, on which three of the defining protagonists of improvisation in Denmark, leading musicians from three generations of Danish jazz, come together.

The concert, in February 2023, was particularly poignant since it marked a return to performance for trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, who delivers some of his most thoughtful playing here. Repertoire, drawn from Jakob Bro’s Returnings and Gefion albums, is addressed in spontaneous and exploratory spirit, and transformed as Marilyn Mazur’s subtle percussion language of blossoming gongs and metals and rumbling drums blends with Bro’s drifting and rippling washes of sound.

The music’s atmospheric qualities, as well its eruptive moments, are enhanced by the resonant acoustics of the Danish Radio Concert Hall.

1. Gefion (8:34)
2. Oktober (7:26)
3. Returnings (8:36)
4. Strands (11:48)
5. Youth (7:32)
6. Lyskaster (2:57)

This opulent new recording opens on the atmospherically-imbibed Gefion and then brings us the ornately sculpted Oktober, a deeper, more grittier guitar and trumpet work then presents itself within Returnings, before we are graced with the shimmering 11 minute opus, the titular Strands, the album rounding out on the drum-fed Youth, coming to a close on the shadowy feel within the impassioned Lyskaster.

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