Home » Jazz Musicians » Tomo Jacobson

Tomo Jacobson

Tomo Jacobson is a Polish-born double bass player based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He focuses his efforts on free improv and other creative musics. With over two dozen albums to his credit, he is mostly known for the projects he is a leader, or co-leader to, namely MOONBOW, MOUNT MEANDER, IL SOGNO, or WOOD ORGANIZATION as well his solo double bass work, and free improv encounters with acclaimed musicians.

Tomo has been very fortunate to perform with the greats like John Tchicai, Hassan Hakmoun, Mat Maneri, Adam Rudolph, Rasul Siddik, Andrew D'Angelo, Lotte Anker, P.O. Jørgens, Frank Gratkowski, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Sun Araw, Mikołaj Trzaska, Michael Blake, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Jacob Anderskov, Kresten Osgood, Hugh Steinmetz, Søren Kjaergaard, Torben Snekkested, Jesper Zeuthen, and many others. He played at numerous festivals like Copenhagen Jazz Festival (DK), Vinter Jazz (DK), Roskilde Festival (DK), Festival of Endless Gratitude (DK), Festa dell'Opera (IT), Milhões de Festa (POR), Jazz Jamboree (PL), Jazz Jantar (PL), Mózg Festival (PL), Sopot Molo Jazz Festival (PL), Audio Art Festival (PL), In Front (DE), Jazz Units (DE), or Creepy Teepee Festival (CZ). He has performed in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Italy, Cuba, Belgium, Czech Republic, Portugal, Austria, Los Angeles and New York.

Tomo is also an active music life curator and organizer in Copenhagen. Most notably he was a founder of the yearly Freedom Music Festival, which was focused on solo and duo free improvised concerts.

He graduated with a master degree from the prestigious Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium in Copenhagen, and later did the Advanced Post Graduate artistic research studies there too. He has also been studying musicology at the University of Warsaw, Poland.

In 2017 together with Hipermania, Tomo has also founded an independent record label and publishing house Gotta Let It Out.

Tomo is also running a music and printed matter store at his apartment in Nordvest, Copenhagen, called Flat Store.

Tags

10
Album Review

Torben Snekkestad / Soren Kjaegaard / Tomo Jacobson: Spirit Spirit

Read "Spirit Spirit" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


“I love the illusive, enigmatic nature of this material. Being in that space can perhaps leave the listener with the only obvious choice of just listening to what is rather than understanding any of it." Tomo Jacobson Polish-born, Copenhagen-based bassist Tomo Jacobson embraces a minimalist mode on his Spirit Spirit. The cover art is a looping line drawing on white; the music is spacious and calm, every note selected in the moment, with seeming great deliberation--although improvisation, by ...

8
Album Review

Maneri / Kalmanovitch / Jacobson / Osgood: Variations On No Particular Theme - Part 1

Read "Variations On No Particular Theme - Part 1" reviewed by Mark Corroto


This free improvisation chamber quartet is an interesting study in bold, yet even-tempered music making. Tomo Jacobson, the Polish-born bassist now making Copenhagen his home, assembled this Europe-meets-North American cast for what appears to be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Jacobson is joined by Danish drummer Kresten Osgood and two violists, the Canadian Tanya Kalmanovitch and American Mat Maneri. Jacobson and Osgood are members of the septet Moonbow, and the drummer released Tzokth Songs (Isula Jazz, 2016) along with ...

5
Album Review

Il Sogno: Graduation

Read "Graduation" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


The group Il Sogno, a piano trio that employs a Wurlitzer piano along with an OB-6 synthesizer, steps back and forth over the line of melodic pop sensibilities into accessible jazz and soundtrack atmospherics to orchestral and sweeping soundscaping, presenting long and winding accompaniments to a surreal dreams—pretty in one tune, challenging and out there on the next. Birthday (Gotta Let It Out, 2017) is the band's first album. The follow-up—the disc in hand—is Graduation. The Polish-Danish-Italian trio—that ...

9
Album Review

Tomo Jacobson: When the sleeping fish turn red and the skies start to sing in C major I will follow you to the end

Read "When the sleeping fish turn red and the skies start to sing in C major I will follow you to the end" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Copenhagen-based bassist Tomo Jacobson--employing his musical vehicle, Moonbow--creates a musical ruckus with When the sleeping fish turn red and the skies start to sing in C-major I will follow you to the end (how's that for a CD title?). And it sounds like a ruckus in the blacksmith shop--metallic, slashing guitar, raucous, ragged-edged, tin/brass saxophones over a pumping-bellows bass and hammering drums. All this, and the sounds still has a feeling of structure--albeit a loose one--that allows the individual instrumentalists ...

7
Album Review

Tomo Jacobson: When the sleeping fish turn red and the skies start to sing in C major I will follow you to the end

Read "When the sleeping fish turn red and the skies start to sing in C major I will follow you to the end" reviewed by Jakob Baekgaard


Every record seeks its ideal listener, but this concept is very abstract and often remains a riddle, but to Polish-born bassist, Tomo Jacobson, his ideal listener is very real and responded in the best possible way to the music on his album When the sleeping fish turn red and the skies start to sing in C major I will follow you to the end. The name of the listener is the iconic bassist and composer, William Parker, ...

Read more articles
"This is an album with a big heart, beating strong, and every single sound on this album is served up with an enthusiasm that holds nothing back. This is what unbounded creativity sounds like. (...) This is one of the most exciting albums I’ve heard all this year." about MOONBOW : #7 on 'Best Albums of 2016' (Dave Sumner - Bird is the Worm - USA) ​

"Like all true artists, Jacobson is on a spiritual quest and the music on the impossibly titled album is filled with hymns and anthems of wild beauty. (...) the leader whose big tone and earthy bass riffs carry the music forward. Jacobson belongs to the tradition of great composer-bassists like Charles Mingus and the aforementioned William Parker. His music is both free and structured, with catchy motifs and solid swing. There is a certain wildness to the music, but as Parker notices, without any anger. Instead, the music whispers, screams and sings with joy, catching an impossible poetic paradox, like the transformation of the elements where water becomes air whose vibrations turns into earthy music filled with fire." 4/4 stars (Jakob Baekgaard - All About Jazz - Denmark)

Read more

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Spirit Spirit

Self Produced
2023

buy

Graduation

Gotta Let It Out
2021

buy

Variations On No...

Gotta Let It Out
2021

buy

Il sogno - Birthday

Gotta Let It Out
2017

buy

...

Multikulti Project
2017

buy

Videos

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.