FIRE! Day 4 CURATED BY LOVELAND MUSIC | JAKOB BRO

BRAND! Day 4 is curated by Loveland Music, by analogy with Copenhagen's new, sizzling jazz festival. Danish guitar virtuoso Jakob Bro is the pivot and curator of this final evening and gathers in the Jakob Bro Large Ensemble a series of musicians from home and abroad, including our central guest of BRAND! 2025, Hanne De Backer. MARIA LAURETTE FRIIS & THOMAS MORGAN 'COLORS' 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 briefly escapes time. 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. In 2018, Bay of Rainbows followed, again a milestone for this acclaimed trio. Since then, the trio has been experimenting more and more with fixed rhythms and with ways in which time is experienced, stretched, elongated, 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. BRAND! Day 4 is curated by Loveland Music, by analogy with Copenhagen's new, sizzling jazz festival. Danish guitar virtuoso Jakob Bro is the pivot and curator of this final evening and gathers in the Jakob Bro Large Ensemble a series of musicians from home and abroad, including our central guest of BRAND! 2025, Hanne De Backer. JAKOB BRO LARGE ENSEMBLE Het Loveland Music Label van Jakob Bro has been connecting musicians across generations and continents in the Jakob Bro Large Ensemble since 2024. BRAND! offers a rare opportunity this year to see this project at work in an exceptional line-up in Mechelen. Bro’s core players, including Thomas Morgan, Joey Baron, Jesper Zeuthen, and Yannick Peeters (who took Bro on her JazzLab Impuls tour in 2014) are supplemented here by 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 meeting that will only take place in this line-up at BRAND!. 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 In collaboration with Cultuurcentrum Mechelen & Jazz Denmark. With support from Brouwerij Omer Vander Ghinste.