Happy Marius Neset

• 1 Happy 06:42
• 2 Wildlife 06:41
• 3 Good Night 00:57
• 4 The Unknown 06:09
• 5 A Hand to Hold 05:03
• 6 Kingdom 01:30
• 7 Hearts 04:16
• 8 Island 04:34
• 9 Diamonds 05:03
• 10 Happy (Single Edit) 04:23
• 11 Wildlife (Radio Edit) 03:40
• Total Runtime 48:58

Info for Happy

It is no exaggeration to say: Norwegian tenor saxophonist Marius Neset plays in his own league. In addition, he is one of the most fascinating and versatile composers in jazz and far beyond - which, among other things, currently takes him as far as London's Royal Albert Hall. Downbeat states, "Marius Neset is not the future, but the present of European jazz." The album "Happy" features Neset with a new, top-class quintet. The album is divided into two parts: In the first half, playful, intricate, energetic songs dominate. And in the second part, Neset & Band take the listeners into a calmer suite. What all pieces have in common: You can hear the musicians' pure joy of playing in every note.

Very great m usicians are often ahead of their time. Saxophonist/composer Marius Neset is one of the most critically and professionally acclaimed musicians in jazz in Europe. He has not only launched his instrument "into a new dimension" (Süddeutsche Zeitung), recent concerto-type works written for the London Sinofonietta and the Bergen Philharmonic have redefined its role as a solo or group-leading instrument with orchestra. His achievements are astonishing, complex, visionary... and maybe sometimes hard to grasp straight away. His unique path of achievement continues, however: Neset will make his debut on the main stage of the Royal Albert Hall, as soloist on 3 September 2022 with an ambitious new work. ‘Geyser’, one of the main festival commissions of its current season from the prestigious BBC Proms.

What might it take, then, for the respect and admiration he so clearly has, particularly among other musicians and from promoters, to start to become reflected in wider popular acclaim, maybe even cult status? Perhaps this new ACT album "Happy" will be a step along that path. Here he draws for the first time on the pop, soul and funk of the 70s and 80s: "There is a 'message' in the title of this album,” says Neset. “It is very simple, but also a very strong one. We had a great time recording the album. A week in the studio, day and night, everyone was loving it. And that long process of making it has essentially been whittled down...into the happiest moments we had." Neset admits that his compositions in the past have often been influenced by the darker side of world events. In view of the many current crises, however, this time he decided to go for the opposite: this is genuinely happy music, which nevertheless doesn’t either deny or abandon anything of Neset’s own musical DNA.

Listeners can expect – as is usual with Marius Neset – to be taken on a roller-coaster ride from the start. And yet there is something else going on in the title track “Happy” which opens the album: delight and pure joy. It may be a wild ride, but the unmistakable felling of happiness finds its way deep into the listener’s ear as well. The music is full of quotations (there’s Stevie Wonder and Cool & The Gang as well as David Sanborn and even Michel Legrand, for starters), the tempo is full-on, the mood is definitely ‘up’, but it is also full of surprising twists and stylistic clean breaks. The piece acts as a prelude to an album which allows Marius Neset to explore new directions: "Some pieces are rhythmically very experimental, although they are explicitly inspired by the simplicity and authenticity of soul," Neset tells us. "The use of keyboards and synth sounds was also new to me. It almost takes me back to 'Golden Explosion', my debut album." On "Wildlife", Neset clearly is drawing on Afrobeats and West African high-life sounds: this is a piece originally composed for classica orchestra, this is a piece originally composed for classical orchestra, and it finds a new serenity in these ideal surroundings. "A Hand To Hold", on the other hand, is a completely classic and quiet ballad – this pared-down purity being a new departure for Neset. As someone who is known for his dynamism and for the velocity and power of his saxophone playing, this time the dial has been set for a different destination: softness. Finally, "Diamonds" is another kind of adventure, as Neset plays over ethereal, electronically generated sounds.

Just as there are new sounds in “Happy”, Neset has also enlisted new bandmembers. Following on from a period in which his attentions have been drawn by writing works for large ensemble, and also his most recent album – for solo saxophone – he returns to the small-group setting, but with only one constant from his most recent, much-loved and astonishingly well-travelled quintet, and that is Anton Eger. The Swedish drummer has the capacity to be in synch with Neset's explosive rhythmic ideas like nobody else. Pianist Magnus Hjorth, also from Sweden, is an acquaintance from Neset's early career, and makes a return here. Back in 2005, he was the original pianist in the trio Phronesis, from which Neset over time was to recruit other band members...There are also completely new British components in Neset's quintet: "I wanted an electric bass player and a keyboard player for the project. I had already met Conor Chaplin at some gigs, and started to imagine his bass sound as I was composing, he is a very fresh and inspiring presence for me. I had, of course, heard a lot of good things about Elliot Galvin. I thought his keyboard playing would be a perfect fit in the quintet, his style being so unconventional. As luck would have it, he agreed with me. Very crucial for the album is the balance that Magnus on the piano and Elliot on the keyboard found for their completely different musical identities. They had an instant chemistry and I'm still blown away by the way their opposite musical natures seem to complement each other."

Neset has also been particularly focused on the bigger structures, the narrative arcs of this album. Therefore, after the groove-infused introduction and a brief excursion to Africa, the album takes off onto new paths and finds its way into the unknown. One particularly inspired flick of the switch is "The Unknown". Here, Neset says, an over-arching influence has been György Ligeti. We might think of Marius Neset as adventurous, elemental and yet with the wish to express melancholy. Here we find him in several new guises: he can also by turn be "classical"...or gentle...or cheerful. The sheer delight of this new album is bound to win him new fans.

Marius Neset, tenor- and soprano saxophone
Elliot Galvin, keyboards
Magnus Hjorth, piano
Conor Chaplin, e-bass
Anton Eger, drums, percussion

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 Happy