Marius

After Marius Neset's ACT debut Lion, with the Trondheim Orchestra, the move back into a soloist spotlight on Pinball is a timely reminder of why the jazz world pricked up its ears when Neset emerged several years ago. His virtuosity, from the bedrock strength of tone to the torrents of phrasal ideas, extends a rich lineage of sax giants that runs from Chris Potter to Michael Brecker back to one of their key role models, Joe Henderson, but also references the more serene ways of Jan Garbarek.

Marius Preda comes from a musical family, where at the age of four, he received his first big toy from his grandmother. It was a Cimbalom! He immediately fell in love with this toy and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world! Since then, he spent all of his days and nights playing the new instrument. In 1993, Marius was invited to the Netherlands and in '95 he began to study the "Vibraphone"at the Jazz Department of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands, where he graduated with a distinction. With the skills he accumulated over these years, Marius was able to develop a new way of playing the cimbalom. As a result he became the first cimbalom player in the history of Jazz.

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.

The talented young Norwegian jazz-musician and composer Daniel Herskedal created this suite as a comission work to Soddjazz festival (Norway in 2012. Norwegian press called it "A masterpiece". It´s a diverted recording in jazz-, folk-, pop-, classical and world-music landscapes. Behind soloist Helene Bøksle (vocals) and Marius Neset (sax) is a powerful jazz-trio and an even more powerful wind- and string section. This "big-chamber-jazz-band" creates joyful music with a new Norwegian sound. Beautiful ballads sung by Bøksle, jazz-explosiions from Marius Neset and Espen Berg on piano. And a wonderful tune called "The day we´ll never forget", played by Herskedal on basstrumpet. These are some of the highlights on the recording. "Dagane shows a new direction in the Norwegian sound of jazz. A very exciting release. And NORCD is proud to present Daniel Herskedals album number two. His "City Stories" (2010) is among our highlights.

The 34-year-old Bergen-born tenor/soprano saxophonist-composer Marius Neset presents his new recording Viaduct and makes his boldest, most restlessly diverse statement to date. On his fifth album for leading European label ACT, Neset organically integrates a wide-ranging, colourful kaleidoscope of influences with his compelling compositions/arrangements for a pair of extended suites. Originally commissioned for the opening concert of the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in 2018, Viaduct offered Neset a fantastic opportunity to reunite his regular top-notch Brit-Scandi jazz quintet with world-class 19-piece London Sinfonietta, having initially performed together for his 2016 ACT release Snowmelt.