A New Dawn

The energy and the unassailable virtuosity with which Marius Neset burst onto the scene have not been forgotten. Back in 2004, as a nineteen-year old student recently moved to Copenhagen, he won the Talent Award at Norway’s Nattjazz Festival. He then made a huge impression as a member of groups led by Django Bates in 2008-2010. John Fordham of the Guardian described his 2011 debut album of original compositions as “sensational”, “indispensable”. He was the only artist from Europe in the Downbeat 2016 feature “25 For The Future,” in which he was described as “not only an impressive technician but also a formidable composer.”

There has always been much more to Neset’s artistry than mere virtuosity: he has achieved several huge and successful composition projects with both classical and jazz orchestras, notably on three of the six previous albums he has produced on ACT since 2014, one of which, Lion, won him the coveted Norwegian Grammy, the Spellemannprisen. Now back and settled in Norway, the “Wizard from Os” (Jazznyt) finds new ways of combining the urge to construct compositional structures with being free in the moment. Among the many delights of his seventh ACT album A New Dawn, Neset says that one of his own favourites is Morning Mist. His transformation of the opening of Lutoslawski’s first cello concerto into a vivid dialogue between two very different characters, a high and a low voice, does indeed feel like a stroke of genius.