London Sinfonietta & Marius Neset

Marius Neset has spent the last two decades reimagining the sound palette of contemporary jazz. Known for his ecstatic compositional style, the Norwegian saxophonist takes a defiantly maximalist approach, placing his spontaneous horn playing alongside lush orchestral arrangements that sound like they’ve been written in watercolour.

In this concert, his relentless improvisations are accompanied by the pulse and precision of London Sinfonietta, and he presents a new work.

Neset’s saxophone serves as a waypoint. At its most tender, it can be an anchor, pulling him into the lush arrangements built up by London Sinfonietta. But he also uses his instrument as a point of no return. His blistering melodic lines filibuster towards freedom, escaping the contained worlds constructed in his scores.

Neset first worked with London Sinfonietta in 2016, unleashing the dizzying orchestral sprawls ‘Arches of Nature’ and ‘Snowmelt’. Calling on the illusory effect of prog-rock repetition, as well as the freewheeling harmonic changes of jazz, these pieces distort the perceived boundaries between control and chaos, observing them as one entity.

This concert also features a new multimedia piece by emerging composer Ashkan Layegh. At the heart of Layegh’s work is a sense of reflection, exploring how music and imagery can hold up a mirror to themselves.

Ephemerality and Recurrence weaves together three quartets: a string quartet from the London Sinfonietta; Layegh’s Phemo Quartet (alto saxophone, piano, electric bass, and drums); and a quartet of visuals, illustrations, texts and process notes projected on screen, with Harvey Cullis as director of photography and Amir Hossein Asadi as illustrator.