Jacob Forever

Forever Young features melodically inventive, harmonically sophisticated and rhythmically alert jazz, composed by Norwegian-American guitarist Jacob Young and played by a spirited team of contemporaries. Young and saxophonist Trygve Seim are friends since school days, and have been heard on the Norwegian jazz scene in numerous combinations and contexts over the years. They are joined on this album by the Polish pianist, bassist and drummer widely known as the Marcin Wasilewski Trio, a group with its own 20 years playing history. Young's playing throughout offers great technical facility, but he is a democratic bandleader, never showy. Forever Young stands out in his catalog because it reveals an almost immeasurable growth in his compositional skills since 2007. These tunes inspire this fine band; they play as if they'd been playing them for ages.

Jacob Young’s fourth leader-recording for ECM not only presents the guitarist’s first pass a the guitar trio format, but moreover offers a broader view of his compositional pallet, as he, bassist Mats Eilertsen and drummer Audun Kleive explore a wide variety of pulsations, temperaments and styles, all tied together by Jacob’s always melodic embrace. On his last effort, 2015’s Forever Young, the guitarist was joined by Trygve Seim and the Marcin Wasilewski Trio, performing what The Guardian called, “a set full of undemonstrative surprises and contrasts”, where “the quality of the composing matches the formidable powers of the band.”