A lot has happened in the space of 16 years. So take us back.
In 2010, Norwegian saxophonist Marius Neset – now one of Europe’s biggest jazz saxophone stars – wasn’t known at all to British audiences.
Not now. He was touring recently in England for the umpteenth time and has long worked with English musicians. Not only that he has broken out of the clubs and even appeared at the Proms.
So before all of this he got a big leg up because it was at Kings Place in London and Django Bates’ 50th birthday concert when Bates who had taught Neset at the Rhythmic in Copenhagen generously brought Neset on for his first UK appearance – you can read my review of it writing in Jazzwise back then.
He sounded great that night. But you could not – unless you were mystic Meg and I certainly am not – have predicted the level of his success as both a recording and touring artist since.
If push were to come to shove I’d say his top albums are 1/ Geyser: Live at Robert Albert Hall with the London Sinfonietta and much further back 2/ Lion in his Edition label phase and 3/ Birds with members of Phronesis and Jim Hart.
Neset, who hails from Bergen, already has delivered a large discography containing some 17 albums at least if my abacus is working properly. No matter if it’s on the blink that’s staggering in terms of typically high quality output when you realise that Neset has only recently turned 41.
There’s plenty of life elsewhere involving dazzling soloing and strongly constructed sectional work accompanying for example ‘The Unknown’ a tune that appeared on Neset’s earlier album Happy that also featured the drummer here Anton Eger of Phronesis renown who co-produced this new album with Neset.
Other tunes here also include a version of the initally hymnal ‘Life Can Be Bright’ that deserves close inspection alongside another rippling treatment of his piece that Neset performed with the Frankfurt Big Band last year for instance.
Altogether Time to Live proves lively and resolutely unstuffy. It even verges on being another thing entirely like it was miniature symphonic, as on ‘Time to Breathe,’ which sounds more like a contemporary classical piece when the brass in the big band come into their own brandishing robust fanfares that are juxtaposed with more intimate asides from the rest of the musicians.
To go back to the beginning you can hear the influence of Django Bates still on Neset on a track like the dazzling ‘Coming Out’ where the funky bass and sprawling competing rhythms coalesce into something far bigger than the sum of its parts. Neset knows how to scale his tunes up better than most. Nothing is lost in that expansion.
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