BRAND! Day 4
Curated by Loveland Music
BRAND! Day 4 is curated by Loveland Music, analogous to Copenhagen’s new, electrifying jazz festival. Danish guitar virtuoso Jakob Bro is the driving force and curator of this closing night, bringing together a host of musicians from Belgium and abroad in the Jakob Bro Large Ensemble, including our featured guest at BRAND! 2025, Hanne De Backer
In collaboration with Cultuurcentrum Mechelen & Jazz Denmark.
Vocals: Maria Laurette Friis • double bass: Thomas Morgan
MARIA LAURETTE FRIIS & THOMAS MORGAN 'COLORS'
What happens when you bring together Maria Laurette Friis—the Copenhagen-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, and one of the most unique Scandinavian voices—with the exceptional double bassist Thomas Morgan (USA) for an improvised session? The answer: a subtle, almost “fantastic” language unfolds all on its own, briefly escaping the constraints of time
Guitar: Jakob Bro • double bass: Thomas Morgan • drums: Joey Baron
JAKOB BRO, THOMAS MORGAN & JOEY BARON
In 2016, the formidable trio of Jakob Bro on electric guitar, Thomas Morgan on double bass, and the legendary Joey Baron on drums and percussion released one of the most beautiful ECM albums: Streams. Bay of Rainbows followed in 2018, another milestone for this acclaimed trio. Since then, the trio has been experimenting more and more with steady rhythms and with ways in which time is experienced, tensed, stretched, and released. Those rhythms form the core of their interplay: melodies that emerge as if they had already been written, often with a strangely familiar character. The trio is constantly searching for a shared moment and a common language.
Guitar: Jakob Bro • double bass: Thomas Morgan • double bass: Yannick Peeters • drums: Joey Baron • drums: Anke Verslype • saxophone: Jesper Zeuthen • saxophone: Hanne De Backer • saxophone: Ben Van Gelder • electronics: Mads Emil Nielsen
JAKOB BRO LARGE ENSEMBLE
Since 2024, Jakob Bro’s Loveland Music Label has been bringing together musicians across generations and continents in the Jakob Bro Large Ensemble. This year, BRAND! offers a rare opportunity to see this project in action in Belgium, in an exceptional lineup tailored to the festival. Bro’s core musicians—including Thomas Morgan, Joey Baron, Jesper Zeuthen, and Yannick Peeters (who took Bro on her JazzLab Impuls tour in 2014), are joined here by Ben Van Gelder, Mads Emil Nielsen, and a few familiar local voices such as Anke Verslype (aki) on drums and saxophonist Hanne De Backer - who was a featured guest at BRAND! 2025 just last year.
This mix of familiar and new faces gives the ensemble a fresh, lively dynamic: a large group that breathes like a living organism, at times intimate and intimate, at other times massive and layered. With Jakob Bro on guitar serving as a gentle catalyst, a collective emerges in which listening, creating space, and unexpected combinations take center stage—a unique encounter that will only take place in this lineup at BRAND!