Maria Laurette Friis / Thomas Morgan: Colors (Official Video)

Maria Laurette Friis: Vocals
Thomas Morgan: Double Bass
Produced by Jakob Bro.

Loveland Music presents the first album by Maria Laurette Friis / Thomas Morgan – "Colors" is released May 23rd, 2025 on LP/digital.

Listen: lovelandcph.bandcamp.com
Buy: shop.jakobbro.com

Duo improvisation can be such a rare space to enter. Creating a common language in an open sea of infinite options, everything stands out. Especially with such fundamental natural instruments as the voice and bass.

So what happens if you bring together Maria Laurette Friis, the Copenhagen-based composer, multi-instrumentalist and one of Scandinavia’s unique voices, and the exceptional double bass player Thomas Morgan in an improvised session? Well, it continues for more than three hours and develops into a subtle ‘fantastic’ language of its own.

Both adept improvisers in their own right, Maria Laurette Friis and Thomas Morgan have specific connections to language. As a sound artist and vocalist Laurette Friis creates her own in the moment, and Morgan speaks fluent Esperanto and is well versed in computer programming languages (his father was a computer science professor). In musical terms they have appeared together on the Copenhagen improv scene a few times (but never performed as a duo) and draw on electronic music, contemporary composition music, Japanese music and free jazz as well. On ‘Colors’ the departure point is as minimalistic as it gets.

“I love the music of Maria Laurette and Thomas Morgan. For me it is the most obvious choice to put them together. They were both playing a part of a symposium night in Copenhagen’s Brorsons Church, and that night a seed was planted for a duo recording a couple of years later. Just the voice and double bass. In the studio they recorded more than 3 hours of music. Everything that happened was beautiful, starting from nothing and opening a door into something new every other minute. It was really moving actually, listening back to every moment and finding into the heart of the improvisations, which in my mind quickly became compositions,” says Jakob Bro, who produced ‘Colors’ in the final process at the time of recording music to ‘Music For Black Pigeons’ with directors Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed.

Maria Laurette Friis is a composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist from Copenhagen, Denmark. She was the lead songwriter in the influential alternative jazz outfit Tys Tys, and has since performed with her own Fritz Fontana Ensemble and solo projects, as well as with Søren Kjærgaard in the John Cage tribute ‘Suddenly, Silence’ and with Pamelia Kurstin, Henriette Sennenvaldt, Jomi Massage, Kresten Osgood a.o. Her singular voice forms a microcosm of tones and sounds with ethereal musicality and presence.

Thomas Morgan is a double bass player with a unique approach to the instrument and an exceptional musical understanding. He began to study the cello at the age of seven and continued until the age of fourteen, when his attention turned to the double bass. Since moving to New York more than 25 years ago, Thomas Morgan has appeared on more than 100 albums, establishing himself as one of the most in-demand sidemen in jazz. Collectively, the musicians he has recorded with make up a kind of modern pantheon of influential jazz artists: Paul Motian, John Abercrombie Quartet, Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Tomasz Stanko New York Quartet, Bill Frisell Trio, Jakob Bro Trio w. Joey Baron among many others. He has also collaborated with Henry Threadgill, Lee Konitz, Jen Shyu, Tyshawn Sorey, Craig Taborn and Masabumi Kikuchi. He has released two duo albums with Bill Frisell, ‘Small Town’ and ‘Epistrophy’, and ‘Once Around The Room’ with Jakob Bro/Joe Lovano. ‘Colors’ is his third appearance on Loveland Music.

‘Colors’ is the newest release on the Copenhagen-based platform Loveland Music, which is also releasing music by Mark Turner, Jesper Zeuthen/AC/Marilyn Mazur, Jakob Bro Large Ensemble, Midori Takada and the soundtrack to Music For Black Pigeons.

Credits

Maria Laurette Friis: Vocals
Thomas Morgan: Double Bass

All compositions by Maria Laurette Friis & Thomas Morgan
Arranged and produced by Jakob Bro

Recorded and mixed at The Village Studio, Vanløse.
Engineer: Thomas Vang
Mastered at The Village Studio B.
Mastering Engineer: David Elberling

Artwork: Tal R
Cover Design: Claus Due
Video: Adam Jandrup and Andreas Koefoed

Loveland Music 2025 (LLM024)
Supported by the Danish Arts Foundation