Snowmelt Marius Neset with London Sinfonietta

• 1 Prologue 02:14
• 2 Arches of Nature: Sirens 01:53
• 3 Arches of Nature: Acrobatics 04:10
• 4 Arches of Nature: Circles 03:20
• 5 Arches of Nature: Caves 02:21
• 6 Arches of Nature: Paradise 05:54
• 7 Arches of Nature: Rainbows 03:35
• 8 Arches of Nature: Pyramiden 03:26
• 9 The Storm Is Over 09:00
• 10 Introduction to Snowmelt 04:16
• 11 Snowmelt 11:54
• Total Runtime 52:03

Info for Snowmelt

The album „snowmelt“ is Neset's most ambitious, cherished and personal project to date. In these concentrated works, Neset has sought out chaos and dissonance, he has also been drawn to lyricism and tenderness, and then worked at finding a balance between the extremes, using compositional methods which subliminally bring out the continuities between them. Neset says of this work that he aspires to is to “find the point when everything makes sense.” For the listener, the search for that point will bring its own rewards.

Legendary US jazz magazine DOWNBEAT has selected Norwegian saxophonist Marius Neset as the only European resident among its “25 FOR THE FUTURE” list of young and upcoming musicians destined to shape the future of jazz. According to the magazine Neset is “one of the most exciting artists in jazz”, his “discography reveals not only an impressive technician but also a formidable composer” who “strives for deep originality in his music.”

The three main compositions on “Snowmelt” are the fruit of intense work during the period from 2012 to 2015. On the printed page, these carefully planned and thought-through works, meticulous in their attention to detail and brimming with life, contrast and inventiveness, cover no fewer than 239 pages of full orchestral score.

Neset burst onto the scene with his first album as leader in 2011, and was instantly hailed as combining “Brecker's power and Garbarek's tonal delicacy” and being “on his way to being one of the biggest new draws on the circuit” (Guardian). The album „snowmelt“ is his most ambitious, cherished and personal project to date. In these concentrated works, Neset has sought out chaos and dissonance, he has also been drawn to lyricism and tenderness, and then worked at finding a balance between the extremes, using compositional methods which subliminally bring out the continuities between them.

The origins of the album “Snowmelt” is a 15-minute piece for solo saxophone and chamber orchestra and five singers, commissioned by the Oslo Sinfonietta which had its first performance in March 2013. “I loved working with them and their instrumentation,” but that composition also gave Neset the impetus to take on some more ambitious goals. He wanted not only to work with a bigger body of strings, but also to do a whole album, and to include his quartet. “This is rhythmic music, and I needed the rhythm section from my own band to keep whole thing together.”

Neset says “there is a clear method pinning whole thing together.” This is done in compositional terms by taking a single melodic line and putting it through a kaleidoscope of permutations and a multiplicity of moods. At the beginning of part two, the melodic line is adapted into a twelve-tone row which is stated first by the bass, then the piano, and then bassoon.

The use of the tone-row is not a random element. It stands as a memory a decisive spur to the composition of these works. Neset's musical consciousness was deeply affected by hearing Berg's opera “Lulu” at the Copenhagen Opera in 2012.

Another decisive shadow hanging over the piece (notably in the tender sixth section of “Arches of Nature”) is the drawn-out melody in the adagio of Mahler's tenth symphony, that landmark composition in which Mahler peered furthest into a new world following the collapse of traditional tonality. Other influences from that period are also evident: Stravinsky – there are certainly echoes of the “Circus Polka” in the final section of “Arches of Nature”, in which themes from earlier in the work are combined.

The theme of balancing order and chaos is also a live issue within Neset's quartet, a long-standing working unit, three of whose members, Neset, bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Anton Eger have known each other since their student days most of a decade ago. The three were joined by pianist Ivo Neame in 2012. How do the personalities in this group combine? “Anton and I are planners,” says Neset, “we plan a lot of stuff. Petter and Ivo they are two players who need freedoms. If I suggest something, you can guarantee they will do something else. But I want those surprises. They have great taste and what they do gives me the impetus to create.”

Another feature in this album is the sheer variety of sounds which Marius Neset can derive from the soprano saxophone, which is the result of a conscious and concentrated effort on his part. “I have been working more with the soprano, looking for extremes finding contrasts,” he says. Neset's achievements here recall the long list which that supreme soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy put in his book “Findings,” of all the things that this sometimes unforgiving instrument can do. The soprano sax, wrote Lacy, “can moo hiss kiss whine sigh hoot peep pipe pop ....whirr bark caw...sneeze tease freeze.' On this album, Neset does all of these - and many, many more.

“The Storm is Over” is an opposite pole to all the sequential logic, planning and forward movement of “Arches of Nature”. It holds and sustains a mood of positivity and contentment. The string section writing as the piece reaches its end all tenderness and calm, and the final section is a blissful farewell, never rising above a pianissimo.

“Snowmelt”, the last of the pieces to be written, has the constant rhythmic instability and swagger implicit in its (4 + 4 + 3) time signature. The string writing has echoes of Bartókian savagery, the bass clarinet has some gruff and angry petulance to offload. There is one open section when the quartet is let off the leash and goes where it wants, and other parts of this infectiously rhythmic piece where the three rhythm players dominate the texture and lead the orchestral dance.

Given Neset's long, considered process, the scale of the undertaking, and the sheer amount of work, time and thought that have gone into his compositions, it comes as no surprise that each listen brings seems to bring more revelations. There is always something more here for the listener to discover and unravel.

Neset says of this work that he aspires to is to “find the point when everything makes sense.” For the listener, the search for that point will bring its own rewards.

„Gripping orchestral score with jazz core” (The Guardian, GB)

„Listen closely to the the tonal balance... the orchestral weave... the rhythmic fire... the folksung inflection... the tear-inducing beauty... and, at that moment, there’s nothing creatively or heartwarmingly finer.” (AP Reviews, GB)

„After three years and 239 pages of detailed and inventive orchestral score this ambitious opus is not always an easy listen bit it is, ultimately, a rewarding one.” (London Evening Standard)

„Bravura phonics, spectacular leaps into the upper register and heart-wrenching lyricism, amplified here with the full weight of the London Sinfonietta.“ (Financial Times, GB)

Marius Neset, tenor and soprano saxophone
Ivo Neame, piano
Petter Eldh, bass
Anton Eger, drums
London Sinfonietta
Geoffrey Paterson, conductor

Recorded by Jon Bailey at AIR Studios, London, 16th and 17th March, 2015
Mixed by August Wanngren at We Know Music Studios
Mastered by Thomas Eberger at Stockholm Mastering
Produced by Marius Neset with Anton Eger

Marius Neset
was born in 1985, in Bergen, a sleepy Norwegian harbour town that’s home to the internationally renowned Nattjazz Festival (Neset won the Talent Award there in 2004). Besides his love of jazz in its widest sense, the saxophonist-composer also grew up listening to bands from the so-called ‘Bergen wave’ of post-rock such as Royksopp (and from there on to Radiohead) through to the great classical composer of his hometown Edvard Grieg as well as more contemporary art music. “I love being in the mountains, and silence is a music as well. Maybe it’s because I’m from Norway I feel this,” he says. It accounts for the huge diversity and fluidity of movement between different elements of so-called genres that’s been a key characteristic of Marius Neset’s music to date.

When only 5 years old, before taking up the sax, he took lessons on drums and this has had a significant impact on his approach to composition in particular. “I think the drums gave me a rhythmic base that was very important. I learnt very young to play in these odd meters so I think I have a very natural feel for it,” he says. Neset, in live performance, also has the uncanny ability of making one saxophone sound like two or three.

In 2003 Neset moved to Copenhagen to study at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory. The great English pianist and large ensemble arranger Django Bates was professor there at the time and became Neset’s mentor. The saxophonist went on to become the star turn in Bates’ student big band StoRMchaser recording a CD Spring is Here (Shall we Dance?) in 2008. Meanwhile Neset also released his debut Suite for the Seven Mountains that year on the Danish Calibrated label. Besides a string quartet, it featured the Swedish drummer Anton Eger, who alongside Neset was also a leading member of Scandi-fusion boy band JazzKamikaze. In 2010 Django Bates took him to London to play at a concert at Kings Place marking his 50th birthday. Neset also appeared as a guest in Django Bates’ long time ensemble Human Chain at the famous Ronnie Scott’s club. Recorded by BBC Jazz on 3 he wowed the audience with his contrast of lightening virtuosity and tender, ethereal lyricism. One of those blown away was Dave Stapleton head of the fast emerging UK independent jazz label Edition Records.

Edition signed Neset to the label in 2011. GoldenXplosion, featuring a quartet that included Django on keys and the Scandi-Brit trio Phronesis’ rhythm section of Jasper Hoiby and Eger, was released to glowing press reviews with The Guardian writer John Fordham accurately predicting Neset would be, “on his way to being one of the biggest new draws on the circuit”. By the time of his second CD on Edition Birds in 2012, Neset had started developing his penchant for larger ensemble music and a widescreen palette of instrumental sound.

Still only 29 years of age, Neset is successfully hitting the international stage, and being talked about as a big tenor in a lineage that extends from the post-bop Americans from Michael Brecker, Chris Potter through to fellow Norwegian Jan Garbarek. But there’s a lot more to one of Europe’s brightest young stars than that. “I’m very inspired by people like Frank Zappa, Django Bates, Pat Metheny and Wayne Shorter where the music and the playing is one,” he has said. Neset’s classy, cohesive composition and arranging skills have come into even sharper focus with a new album Lion released in 2014, his debut for the Munich-based ACT, one of Europe’s leading jazz labels, in a collaboration with the celebrated Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, whose former collaborations have boasted the likes of Chick Corea and Pat Metheny. It was originally a commission to compose for the 13-piece orchestra (in a lineup that includes tuba player Daniel Herskedal, a fellow student at RMC who together released an impressive duo album Neck of the Woods in 2012.) for a concert at the 2012 Molde Jazz Festival. “After the premiere in Molde, these compositions felt so special that we decided to record this album and play many more concerts with it,” he says.

Booklet for Snowmelt