Mads Mathias’s highly anticipated second album oforiginal jazz songs arranged for small ensemble, bigband and strings, is due for release on 12th Nov 2021.Since his...

Mads Mathias’s highly anticipated second album of
original jazz songs arranged for small ensemble, big
band and strings, is due for release on 12th Nov 2021.
Since his breakthrough in 2012, leading Nordic jazz
vocalist/saxophonist Mads Mathias has received
numerous awards and toured clubs and festivals across
Europe and Asia, performing at concert halls such as the
Royal Albert Hall and Royal Festival Hall in London
and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Be?ing. He has
also frequently fronted the Danish Radio Big Band.
On this, his sophomore album, Mads has gathered
together some of the best in the business, from
Grammy-nominated DR arranger Peter Jensen and the
UK's leading jazz arranger Guy Barker (London Jazz
Festival’s ‘Jazz Voice’) to the leader of the renowned
Danish String Quartet – Rune Tonsgård, Brazilian
Pandero master Bernardo Aguiar and one of the world’s
best harmonica players, Mathias Heise.
Alongside these new collaborators are long-time
associates ‘the Quentin Tarantino of Danish jazz’ and
playmate since childhood Peter Rosendal (keys), Morten
Ankarfeldt (bass) and Esben Laub & UK rising-star James Maddren on drums, plus an incredible horn section.
‘It’s been really exciting to work with these amazing musicians and be able to use different instrumentation to best
deliver each song’ Mads comments. In so doing, the album provides great variety, yet with a forward-looking,
original and consistent ‘sound’ throughout.
The title ‘I’m All Ears’ references Mads’s intuitive approach to music, having lived part of his life in Tanzania,
where his love for beats, rhythm and swing originated. ‘I get inspiration from many kinds of music and it’s most
important to me how music makes me feel or move - I hear sounds rather than genres’. The album title invites us to
open our ears to different ways of listening, and, beyond music, to open our ears to hear other people and cultures
and their stories in an increasingly polarized world.
And stories are important to Mads. Each song lyric a snapshot, a vignette, - from the tongue in cheek, humorous
lament of a bad dancer in ‘If I were a Dancer’ to the nostalgic wistfulness of ‘Marigold’ - a poetic insight into how
fast children grow up and the fear of a parent having to let them go. Mads describes a particularly personal lyric:
‘’Forbidden Word’ is about not saying no! I’ve always felt that by being open and saying yes to music, people and
new projects I have gained so much that I would otherwise have missed out on. But it's also about fear for me. I hate
fear and I try to fight it by saying yes’.
The result of this latest affirmative is a spellbinding collection of nine undeniably swinging originals. Music to your
ears.