Marius Neset - Pinball (CD)

Release Date: 01/30/15

“Neset is a marvel. He makes his instrument dance like a gazelle and soar like an eagle, and he’s an ingenious composer too.” Telegraph

“Marius Neset is one of the great new tenor sax players of our age, in the tradition of Michael Brecker and Jan Garbarek” (Jazzwise). After his excursion into the bigger band format on his ACT debut “Lion” with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Neset now returns to the compact quintet (with guests) for “Pinball“. Neset and his companions present a shimmering kaleidoscope of forms of expression and influences and delight with compositional and instrumental complexity. At the same time, Neset sounds more mature, soulful and melodic than ever before: “I think the focus is on strong melody compared to my other work, though the music is still complex. There are still difficult polyrhythms and challenging harmony, but I think that the melody is kind of holding things together. You know, I was able to sing them a lot myself. So at times the music can be complex and almost a bit chaotic, but there is a melody, sometimes a simple thing, really, that keeps it all together. “Pinball is about the fact that anything can happen in the music. We have to react to each other and to ideas in the moment, and that’s what I love about jazz. That’s what keeps it fresh. Golden Explosion and Birds were both albums that were planned as suites, but Pinball is more like a set of songs where every piece can really just stand on its own.” Each of the twelve tracks does indeed have a sense of individual life cycle, which is effectively served by production from Neset and Eger that entailed a considerable amount of work both before and after the studio sessions. The comprehensive involvement of the two players in the recording process has lent the album an identity and character every bit as distinctive as a triangle of earth in a great circle of water.