Estonian, Copenhagen-based alto sax player-composer Maria Faust likes to challenge herself with new formats, unorthodox instrumentation, or by composing music that addresses urgent social and political issues, often about women’s place and rights over their own bodies. She is a strong believer that the artist has been given a voice and is obligated to use it.
Littorina Saxophone Quartet - Leaking Pipes (NoBusiness, 2025)
Littorina Saxophone Quartet is a new, pan-Baltic supergroup featuring Faust on alto sax, Finnish Mikko Innanen on alto, sopranino, and baritone saxes, Swedish Fredrik Ljungkvist on soprano and tenor saxes, and Lithuanian Liudas Mockūnas on sopranino, soprano, and bass saxes. The quartet is titled after the Littorina Sea, the ancient name of the Baltic Sea. Leaking Pipes is the debut album of this quartet, and it was recorded by Innanen at Hietsun Paviljonki in Helsinki in March 2024, after a few performances in Finland.
Leaking Pipes proves that these distinct sax players-improvisers-composers share more than just an ancient and new, sweet and salty, wild and calm sea. Innanen’s opening piece, “Kop Kop”, enjoys the orchestral sound of the Littorina Saxophone Quartet, making full use of the whole spectrum of the sax family and the quartet’s strong-minded voices, but also highlights the immediate affinity of these gifted sax players who enjoy exploring its theme with restless, passionate interplay. Faust’s dramatic and mysterious, choral “Hells Bells” sounds as if it corresponds with the sea movements of the Baltic Sea. Ljungkvist’s “Nils Olof” suggests a lyrical, emotional story, beautifully narrated by the quartet that explores its carefully-layered nuances with commanding solos. Mockūnas’ “Shadows” follows with another dramatic, darker story that cleverly employs the sonic spectrum of the quartet. It ends too fast with the free improvised, title piece, and calls for more from this fine collective quartet.
Maria Faust Sacrum Facere - Marches Rewound & Rewritten (Stunt, 2025)
Faust grew up in the Soviet Union, where marches were a daily propaganda tool. Early on, she has learnt to read the world between the lines, and to use music as a hiding place, and about art as the only place to find freedom and truth. Marches Rewound & Rewritten is the third album of the Sacrum Facere (in Latin, human scarification) octet and continues Faust’s compositional strategies that dissect the nature of violence and tyranny in our society.
Sacrum Facere uses the march format for criticising the glorification of wars and their heroes, while repressing the voices of their victims, the horror, and suffering, and from a sober, compassionate feminine point of view. Former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, an avid music lover, mentions in the liner notes that Faust makes us understand the horrific outcomes of wars and the oppressive role of the marches.
Faust leads an ensemble of Danish musicians, or ones who have studied in Denmark, to strip this most militarized form of music from its symbolic values. Italian pianist-drummer Emanuele Maniscalco plays the snare drum and keeps the repetitive, ritualistic rhythmic essence of the march, but Faust’s nine, untitled marches turn this format upside down. Marches Rewound & Rewritten is structured as a nine-movement, choral jazz suite that leads to an emotional, peaceful catharsis. Faust’s reimagines this old musical format and strips the marches from their pompous, propagandistic lies, slowing them down, rewinding them, and allowing them to fail. The soulful, compassionate playing of the Sacrum Facere ensemble reclaims and liberates the march from being a tool of war-mongering tyranny, in our homes and between countries and beliefs.
Maria Faust & The Economics - Rahamaa/Business as Usual (Self-Released, 2025)
Faust is most likely the only composer who can make a playful, musical drama out of a huge monetary fiasco, with some enlightening lessons. Rahamaa (Moneyland in Estonian) or Business as Usual relates to the largest money laundering scandals in European history when Danske Bank, the largest Danish bank, merged with Finnish Sampo Bank, which had an Estonian branch. Between 2007 and 2015, over 800 billion Euros of suspicious transactions originating from Russia, Latvia, and Estonia flowed through the Estonian branch's non-resident portfolio. It was unveiled as a result of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia. None of the heads of Danske Bank were punished, and all the charges against them were dropped, but this scandal had a devastating effect on the Estonian economy.
Faust composed the music for Rahamaa, a multilingual production of the Estonian National Drama Theatre that premiered at the European Capital of Culture, Tartu in Estonia, in June 2024. The production reflects on the newly independent Estonia’s naive and innocent rush to leave poverty behind and catch up with the West, and asks what happens to a person when their only measure of morality and worth is their bank account balance?
The album was recorded at the Eesti Draamateater in Tallinn in January 2025. Faust plays alto sax and leads a new chamber jazz quintet, aptly titled The Ecomosists, with Norwegian trumpeter Oscar Andreas Haug (of Amalie Dahl's Dafnie), Danish frequent collaborator of Faust, trombonist Mads Hyhne, Estonian tubist Toomas-Oskar Kahur, and drummer-percussionist Ahto Abner. Faust's clever pieces for this unconventional quintet, as well as the imaginative arrangements, suggest an ironic and absurdist perspective on the scandal, articulated in a thriller-like, follow-the-money drama that mocks the pompous, corrupt bankers who enabled such a massive fiasco.
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