Maria Faust
Solo Saxophone

Presenting her latest album “MOnuMENT”

Tickets can be purchased at the door.
Admission is $20. (CASH ONLY)
All proceeds go to the artists.

At Zürcher Gallery
33 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012

Saxophonist and composer Maria Faust (born in 1979) is best known for her award-winning large contemporary jazz ensembles including Sacrum Facere, Machina, and Jazz Catastrophe.

Faust is one of the most celebrated Estonian musicians of all time and the recipient of numerous prestigious awards and honors including multiple Danish and Estonian Music Awards. Her work and unique musical language as a composer and improviser are easily identifiable while being challenging to describe due to their inventiveness and her broad spectrum of influences.

Faust’s live performances are known for their intense energy and range of emotions and have been celebrated worldwide by audiences and reviewers for decades. Faust is also known for her commissioned works for groups other than her own. She has written music for the Danish Radio Big Band, Sointi Jazz Orchestra, Tallinn Philharmonics, Choir Collegium Musicale, and many more.

“Faust leaves no doubt about her great flexibility and abilities on the saxophone. She uses loops, effects, and other good things in most of the music. It is both insistent, surprising, ongoing, fluid, harmonious, subtle, and enriching.” -Niels Overgård, (Jazznyt)

Maria Faust’s latest album, MOnuMENT (2022) was noted as one of the best solo albums of the year 2022 by New York City Jazz Records. The album is a contemporary tapestry of reflections and observations by the saxophonist, composer, and improviser - captured in and inspired by the castle both she and architect Louis Kahn would know as children on their home island of Saaremaa. The castle would influence both artists’ creative voices and bodies of work and continues to represent a cross-section of modern and ancient contrasts – brought to life here through acoustic and electronic sound structures.

The overall mood of the album is recognizably Faust in its melancholic and modern folk-like sound code, but it also represents a departure for the celebrated composer. In addition to being her first solo saxophone work, she also uses electronic pedals and effects (recorded live / in-the-moment). Her saxophone playing is expressive and she breaks new ground with her use of harmonics, glissandos, heavy vibrato, and use of extreme dynamics.

The music was recorded in the Kuressaare castle in May of 2021, and improvised. Faust created the tonal structures using the building’s physical space as inspiration and employing its echo, angles, reverb, light, and shadows as tools. Rather than trying to recreate the castle through sound, Faust says that she observed and reflected on the building, watching it from different angles, zooming in and out through spectrums of light and time.

www.mariafaust.com