Maria Faust - Sacrum Facere: Marches Rewound & Rewritten (2025) [Hi-Res]

Maria Faust, Estonian-Danish saxophonist extraordinaire re-imagines music’s most militaristic form, the march, a form first and foremost associated with armies, manly valor; too often the form is propagandistic, commemorating victories or even even celebratory and festive, such as the familiar Radetzky March. We forget, however. that for the victims of war, those who hear the beat of the drum and marching feet in their own towns and countryside, the sound of an approaching army rarely augurs well.

The tragedy of what the civilian faces in war is brought to the forefront in this record where the march, the customary musical accompaniment to war and armies, is hardly celebratory but covers a broad range of emotions – tragic, ominous, foreboding and mournful, to complement its more traditional role keeping marching soldiers in step. To this end, and appropriately for the march form, Faust’s compositions use far more percussive elements than we are used to with jazz records.

And for some, war, its effects, the suffering and horror and its consequences of occupation and reprisals, the march is a part of living memory, quite real and tragic.This is what Maria Faust makes us understand.

Tracklist:
1 March nr. 1.1
2 March nr. 1.2
3 March nr. 3
4 March nr. 2
5 March nr. 4
6 March nr. 5
7 March nr. 0
8 March nr. 6.1
9 March nr. 6.2