Marilyn Mazur Circular Chant

„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.

Elixir is the first album Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur has recorded as a leader for ECM in 14 years. It is an interesting number for Mazur, because she has also spent 14 years as a member of saxophonist Jan Garbarek's recording and touring ensembles. He appears on about half of Elixir as Mazur's only collaborator (apart from producer Manfred Eicher). That said, the solo pieces are the first remarkable aspect of this set. When Mazur works alone, her pieces defy everything we think we know about solo percussion recordings: there is a warmth and directness in these proceedings that is songlike rather than merely hypnotic or virtuosic.

Marilyn Mazur is best known today as the flamboyant percussionist at the heart of the Jan Garbarek Group (Twelve Moons, Visible World), speeding around an ever burgeoning array of multi-ethnic metal, wood and clay instruments. Garbarek: "Marilyn is like the wind. An elemental force." Prior employers Gil Evans, Wayne Shorter, and Miles Davis have similarly valued her pervasive, penetrating percussion. Marilyn drew up the blueprint for Future Song - an American-Danish-Nowegian-Yugoslavian musical alliance - while working the stadiums with Miles in 1989 and the group has survived with intact personnel for eight years. Mazur says: "The music is intended to be like a living organism, expanding through specific dramatic sequences into more open structures. It represents a wide dynamic spectrum, explores many emotions."

On Flamingo Sky the trio has created powerful, constantly developing music that touches on a multitude of sounds. From tender ballads to dreamy musical canvases, from funky pieces to frenetic acid music, it is always played with ease. Your shoulders will stay in place, and often you will be tempted to just lean back, close your eyes and let the music caress your soul and body. Each track has its own atmosphere and pulse, and Mazur’s special melodic touch. Each tune starts with a melodic line or a few notes.

Marilyn Mazur’s work has always expressed a free-spiritedness beyond idioms and borders. Born in New York, raised in Denmark, she has contributed powerfully to improvisation on both sides of the Atlantic, and her resume has included stints with Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Gil Evans as well as 14 years on the road with the Jan Garbarek Group. In recent years her own groups have been the primary focus and the adventurous, song-oriented “Celestial Circle” has been active since 2008. The present disc is the group’s first recording. Material intersperses songs and instrumentals penned by Mazur with collectively improvised trios and duos. Singer Josefine Cronhom (who previously worked with Mazur in the Percussion Paradise ensemble) has her ECM debut here and old friends John Taylor and Anders Jormin make welcome returns.