Tangled Temptations & The Magic Box

About the album

This time, percussionist Marilyn Mazur is not in the company of Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Jan Gabarek, Jon Balke, Dino Saluzzi, Palle Danielsson, Gil Evans or any of the other interna- tional stars, whose groups and recordings the colorful and ori- ginal Danish percussionist has lent her considerable talents. No, here at last is a recording (two CDs!) with Marilyn Mazur’s own group augmented by Swedish guitarist Krister Jonsson, Danish saxophonist Fredrik Lundin, bassist (and her husband) Klavs Hovman, and with vocalist Siri Facchini Haff as a featured guest on three tunes.

TANGLED TEMPTATIONS – the first CD in this exclusive double album – contains music originally commissioned by the expe- rimental theater group Cantabile2 under the leadership of the Italian director Nullo Facchini. The music was composed for and played at Cantabile2’s free interpretation of the Beggar’s Opera. A modern, multimedia version of the famous piece, played enti- rely without the spoken word, telling the story of young girl from Albania, who is enticed into coming to Denmark, where she is 
coerced into working as a prostitute. It is a dramatic and sad story, but when the music is taken out of the original context, it gains its own life as an abstract and hypnotic tale. Each listener may find his own personal, kaleidoscopic musical experience.

The second CD, THE MAGIC BOX, presents old and new mate- rial, mainly written by the bandleader with this group in mind. The CD opens with a brand-new suite with Fredrik Lundin’s warm bass flute guiding the way into fascinating, complex rhyth- mic patterns developing with ecstatic energy. From the very start we find ourselves whirled into Marilyn Mazur’s wondrous world. The doors open wide to a colorful, nuanced magical landscape of intense rhythm, soundscapes, beautiful melodies, subtlety, mystique – and also meditative pieces of compelling beauty and intensity. The compositions are created with space for intuitive interplay from these great musicians and every color of percus- sive sound from Marilyn Mazur’s palette.

Welcome to the hypnotic and magical world of Marilyn Mazur.