Marius Neset - King's Place 18-02-2012
I was almost regretting buying a ticket for this before I went. I'd done some sketchy looking things up on you tube - and I did think it might be yet another gig with too many notes cascading everywhere and clashing with each other in virtuosic yet unpleasant ways. But it was on the Ivo Neme/Jasper Høiby axis of things Jazz so I figured it probably wouldn't be all that bad.
There were a lot of notes. But - they were notes that apparrently communicated something. And experiment. Experiment with the range of sounds that a saxophone can produce - the rhythmic possibilities of breath, the cusp between breath and note, very quiet dynamics, soaring multilayered polysaxohphony using a pedal/here's some bits I recorded earlier. It's frankly quite refreshing to see someone, who can only just be old enough to be a former prodigy, exploring the extremes of their instrument beyond "hey look at how fast my fingers can move and how challenging I can be with my dischords...roaarrrrr!". This is someone taking the saxophone and asking questions like "what else can I make this thing say?".
It was, in a word, breathtaking! I was transfixed.
There were a lot of notes. But - they were notes that apparrently communicated something. And experiment. Experiment with the range of sounds that a saxophone can produce - the rhythmic possibilities of breath, the cusp between breath and note, very quiet dynamics, soaring multilayered polysaxohphony using a pedal/here's some bits I recorded earlier. It's frankly quite refreshing to see someone, who can only just be old enough to be a former prodigy, exploring the extremes of their instrument beyond "hey look at how fast my fingers can move and how challenging I can be with my dischords...roaarrrrr!". This is someone taking the saxophone and asking questions like "what else can I make this thing say?".
It was, in a word, breathtaking! I was transfixed.