When I started work on Geyser last autumn I had decided I was done composing music that reflected the pain of the pandemic. This new piece was to be instead a celebration – of music, its welcome return and that unique atmosphere created by musicians when they meet to perform. Its mood was to be predominantly joyful and optimistic, while its title was a metaphor for the music’s underlying rhythmic energy, unleashed intermittently in ecstatic outbursts – like explosions of water and steam from a pressurised geothermal spring. (This idea of tension, boiling under the surface, is a theme I return to in a lot in my music.)

Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, an ECM musician for more than fifty years, is a masterful player who has always welcomed a challenge. His first recording with his new quartet – including rising stars Marius Neset and Helge Lien (both bandleaders in their own right)– is almost entirely improvised. The players make the leap of faith together and find and develop forms in the moment, an object lesson in spontaneous group creativity. Affirmation was recorded in November 2021 at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio.

The Norwegian Marius Neset has split his career between cool Scandi jazz and adventurous composition for symphony orchestras, gaining considerable acclaim for both. Here he combines the two, putting his quartet in the centre of a complex soundscape played by the versatile Norwegian Radio Orchestra under the British conductor Geoffrey Paterson. Mostly a series of musical portraits, it is an ear-opening, often beautiful listen. Complex work is drawn from the simplest of themes. A Day in the Sparrow’s Life imitates the jerky, carefree behaviour of the bird with a folk dance that expands into a skirmish of contrapuntal melodies. The two-part It Looks Like Glass is a brilliant evocation of the material’s occasionally sinister sheen.

It is no exaggeration to say: Norwegian tenor saxophonist Marius Neset plays in his own league. In addition, he is one of the most fascinating and versatile composers in jazz and far beyond - which, among other things, currently takes him as far as London's Royal Albert Hall. Downbeat states, "Marius Neset is not the future, but the present of European jazz." The album "Happy" features Neset with a new, top-class quintet. The album is divided into two parts: In the first half, playful, intricate, energetic songs dominate. And in the second part, Neset & Band take the listeners into a calmer suite. What all pieces have in common: You can hear the musicians' pure joy of playing in every note.

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.