BRAND! jazz festival - Final day

The final day of jazz festival BRAND! 2026 is curated by Loveland Music, the label with which Jakob Bro has been connecting musicians across generations and continents since 2024. In the spirit of the eponymous, vibrant festival in Copenhagen, the Danish guitar virtuoso is the pivot and curator of this evening, which culminates in a grandly set final piece: the Jakob Bro Large Ensemble. For this apotheosis, he gathers an impressive international line-up, one-time and unique in Mechelen, with, among others, the central guest of BRAND! 2025, Hanne De Backer. PART 1 What happens when you bring Maria Laurette Friis - the Copenhagen-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, and one of Scandinavia’s most unique voices - together with the exceptional double bassist Thomas Morgan for an improvised session? The answer: a subtle, almost ‘fantastic’ language unfolds itself, which escapes time for a moment. Zang Maria Laurette Friis / Contrabas Thomas Morgan PART 2 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. In 2018 followed Bay of Rainbows, again a milestone for this highly acclaimed trio. Since then, the trio has been experimenting more and more with fixed rhythms and with ways in which time is experienced, stretched, pulled, and released. Those rhythms form the core of their interaction: melodies that emerge as if they were already written, often with a strangely familiar character. This trio does not perform spectacular tricks, but seeks a shared moment and a common language. Gitaar Jakob Bro / Bas Thomas Morgan / Drums Joey Baron PART 3 Het Loveland Music Label van Jakob Bro, active since 2024, connects musicians across generations and continents in the Jakob Bro Large Ensemble. BRAND! offers a rare opportunity this year to see this project at work in an exceptional line-up in Mechelen. Bro’s core players, with, among others, Thomas Morgan, Joey Baron, Jesper Zeuthen, and Yannick Peeters (who played along in 2014 during Bro’s JazzLab Impuls tour) are supplemented here with Mads Emil Nielsen and some locally trusted voices like Anke Verslype (aki) on drums and saxophonist Hanne De Backer - last year still central guest at BRAND! 2025. That mix of original and new faces gives the ensemble a fresh, lively dynamic: a large group that breathes like an organism, sometimes intimate and small, then again massive and layered. Met Jakob Bro on guitar as a soft catalyst creates a collective in which listening, giving space, and unexpected combinations are central - a unique encounter that can only take place at BRAND, in this line-up. Gitaar Jakob Bro / Contrabas Thomas Morgan and Yannick Peeters Drums Joey Baron and Anke Verslype / Saxofoon Jesper Zeuthen, Hanne De Backer and Ben Van Gelder Elektronica Mads Emil Nielsen