Marius Neset

Jazz saxophonist Marius Neset is also a composer whose music incorporates influences from contemporary classical styles, progressive rock, and other genres. He has been hailed as a successor to progressive jazz players like Michael Brecker and Jan Garbarek and even to the so-called Third Stream jazz-classical fusion composers of the 1960s. Neset was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1985. His father, Terje Neset, was a guitarist, and his mother, Anne Leni Søfteland Sæbø, was a pianist; he had two sisters who became professional musicians. Growing up, he was influenced not only by music at the local Nattjazz festival (whose talent prize he won in 2004) but by progressive Bergen rock bands such as Royskopp and by the classical music of Bergen native Edvard Grieg. Neset took his first music lessons on drums at age five, soon switching to saxophones (tenor and soprano) but retaining traces of his background as a percussionist in his music. Neset attended the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, Denmark, working with arranger and pianist Django Bates. Bates became Neset's mentor, including him in the big band StoRMchaser, on whose 2008 album, Spring is Here, Neset was heard. Neset released his solo jazz debut Suite for the Seven Mountains that year on the Calibrated label. In 2010, he appeared at the Ronnie Scott's club in London with Bates' ensemble Human Chain. He has continued to live in Copenhagen. Neset recorded for the Edition and then ACT labels through the 2010s. His albums often had classical influences. Lion (2014) featured the 13-member Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, while Viaduct (2019), originally commissioned for Norway's Kongsberg Jazz Festival in 2018, included Neset's jazz band and the London Sinfonietta. Neset described it as somewhere between improvised and modern contemporary classical music. On 2020's Tributes, Neset was joined by the Danish Radio Big Band. Neset returned in 2022 on the classical-oriented Chandos label with the album Manmade, a full-fledged classical saxophone concerto on the theme of climate change on which he was backed by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of conductor Edward Gardner. ~ James Manheim, Rovi