A Seeker's Dream: Marubia's Saxophone Between Dream, Spirit, and Rhythm

The Suppressed Voice Finds Wings:

Biographical Presentation

The story of Marubia, the saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist originally from Northern Germany, isn't simply the tale of a budding talent, but of a voice that had to fight for its authenticity. Her early musical experiences were framed within a rigorous framework, including folk © instruments, classical piano lessons, and choral singing: a solid foundation, yes, but also a prison of rules.

A feeling of "rigidity" that the artist recalled as suffocating, to the point of almost making her want to abandon music itself. As she expressed in the interview: " It never felt like personal expression; it always felt like I was trying to interpret someone else's spirit." This prison of scores and conventions kept her from true emotional expression until a moment of epiphany, one day when Jan Garbarek 's sonic world burst into her life. Listening to the album Dis was an internal earthquake, a turning point that pushed her inexorably towards the saxophone and improvisation, two elements that allowed her to rediscover the pleasure of creation.

The saxophone, in particular, became the vehicle of his liberation. " The saxophone gave wings to the suppressed voice that classical training had imposed on me," Marubia said, describing the act of playing as a direct reflection of his most authentic spirit. With a solid academic background in saxophone, piano, and music pedagogy, but with a liberated soul, he was able to absorb the teachings of jazz luminaries such as Tony Lakatos, Greg Osby, and Lee Konitz. Her solo debut, Odyssey, heralded this free spirit, but it was with A Seeker's Dream that Marubia's sound condensed into a mature and definitive artistic statement.

A Seeker's Dream: The Architecture of Sleep

Marubia's second studio album, A Seeker's Dream, released under Inner Circle Music, isn't just a record; it's a sound installation, a sculpture of fog and rhythm carved for the hours that know no daylight. The resulting genre is a masterful blend, almost impossible to pin down: it's Spiritual Jazz in dialogue with the ethereal melancholy of Nordic Jazz, all wrapped in a blanket of hypnotic, vibrant Trip-Hop .

This work is a sonic journey that takes place beyond the tyranny of the clock. The nine original compositions are framed by an intro and an outro, transforming listening into a “dreamlike experience, transcending linear time and form," as specified in the press release .

It is not a simple album, but a guided journey that reflects the "inner landscape of the human spirit."

The uniqueness of this work lies in the creative process that generated it, a method that Marubia defines as a need to "translate" altered states of consciousness into music. Her belief that " dreams are simply another kind of reality, a space in which the Self feels more deeply connected to the universe " becomes the key to deciphering the album's dense and layered atmospheres. We hear not just music, but the echoes of an awakened unconscious.

The sound of her tenor and soprano saxophones, often accompanied by the warm and cavernous timbre of the bass clarinet, moves between rarefied ambient meditations and pulsating rhythmic vamps, weaving a narrative that is at once intimate and universal.

The Beating Heart of Sound Symbiosis

A fundamental element in the sonic architecture of A Seeker's Dream is the sonic symbiosis with musical partner Fontaine Burnett. More than just a session musician, Burnett is co-producer, mixing and mastering engineer, as well as a multi-instrumentalist (bass, piano, synthesizers, drums, LinnStrument ). His influence permeates the entire sonic spectrum, providing the rhythmic grid and electronic textures over which Marubia's horns can float and improvise.

Their collaboration, as Marubia explained with surprising candor, is rooted in a profound bond: " You could call it a true sonic symbiosis, but it goes beyond that. It's like making love ." It's this constant exchange of ideas, this uninterrupted flow between acoustic and electronic, that defines the "heartbeat" of their studio work. Her years of experience in wind instrument arrangements intersect with Burnett's rhythmic prowess, but the exchange is constant, fluid, never rigid.

This deep connection is also reflected in her creative methodology, which draws on her experience as a visual artist. When speaking about composition, Marubia says, " It's like letting the music guide me, and in the end, the painting appears in sound." Burnett's sound design, composed of drone textures and ambient sounds, provides the "canvas" and the

"pigments." Synthesizers and pulsating rhythms become the expressive space with which Marubia paints her melodies. The result is an album in which the production is not simply a garment, but the very skin of the music. A sonic body that breathes thanks to the organic and living union between the two artists. The Cinematic Arrangements for strings and wind instruments, personally curated by Marubia, add layers of color and drama to this complex canvas.

Scattered Traces: Meditations and Invocations

The album is divided into nine tracks that, though they form an unbroken arc, each offer a unique perspective on the inner quest. The order of listening is an act of discovery, and by randomly choosing some titles, we can grasp the emotional variety of the journey:

• As Far As the Heart Can See (Track 2): This song personifies the album's dreamlike thesis. It's not just a song; it's a story of spiritual transmission. The melody, clear and vivid, came to Marubia in a dream. The artist revealed that she felt it was " a gift... from Fontaine's father," a saxophonist who passed away before he could collaborate with his son. It's a piece imbued with a transcendent melancholy . The bass clarinet introduces a sense of mystery, while the soprano saxophone soars in improvisations that seem like wisps of smoke in a night sky. It's a dialogue with absence.

• Gift Us Peace (Track 8): Positioned at the emotional and narrative heart of the piece, this song is an invocation. The words used in the lyrics are not Marubia's, but are taken from a famous speech given by Haile Selassie to the United Nations. The artist chose these lyrics because she felt the Negus's words clearly expressed a truth about the desire for unity and peace that was in her heart. Marubia confessed: " It seemed as if she... the Music itself had chosen them, weaving them into the piece as an invocation, a prayer for peace." Burnett's rhythmic trance here is less aggressive but more insistent, creating a hypnotic bed for the vocal pleas and plaintive saxophone solos.

• What If (Track 3): This piece reflects on personal transformation, on the courage to embrace internal change. The tenor saxophone takes on a fuller, more assertive voice here, almost as if challenging the self's uncertainties. The balanced use of synthesizers, handled by both producers, creates a spatial echo that suggests the breadth of dilemma and the limitless potential of choice.

• Transcension (Track 7): Listening to this song, you sense the album's cinematic intention. It's a moment of pure levitation. The use of the Kalimba, credited in the liner notes, adds a percussive, crystalline touch, like drops of water falling in a cave. The string arrangements swell and recede like emotional tidal waves, amplifying the sense of a transition, of an ascent to a new awareness.

Echo of Criticism

Although Marubia is an artist on the rise, the international critical buzz surrounding A Seeker's Dream is already significant. The specialized press seems to converge in identifying authenticity as the primary quality of the work. Critics from publications such as Jazz Magazine have applauded her ability to fuse the rhythmic trance of Trip-Hop with the breathy rhythm of Nordic Jazz, praising the originality of a "formula that never descends into mere contamination." DownBeat, on the other hand, particularly highlighted the clarity of the saxophone's timbre, a sound that "manages to be warm and sharp, spiritual but never ethereal to the point of evanescence." Her resistance to genre labeling has been celebrated by many as an act of courage and artistic honesty .

Final Reflection

This rejection of labels, as Marubia herself has confirmed, is central to her philosophy: "If music had no name, no label, I would still know when it spoke to me. (...) Style doesn't matter.

What matters is the soul of the music, its message, its power to awaken reflection and self-realization ."

A Seeker's Dream is, ultimately, a map of a non-physical territory. It's an invitation to explore those recesses of consciousness rarely illuminated by sound. Marubia has taken the discipline of the conservatory, exploded it with the freedom of jazz, and channeled it into modern hypnosis, creating a work that is both a concert and an act of meditation. Listening to this album isn't a pastime, but an immersion. It's like watching a shadow dance in the dim light of a candle, knowing that the shadow itself is more real than the wall it's projected onto.

At the end of the sonic journey, when the outro fades away the last reverberations, you haven't simply listened to an album: you've completed a cycle. You remain suspended, waiting, in the silence just created.

The breath of the saxophone fades; the mysterious sound of one's own heartbeat remains, now transformed into a slow, steady internal rhythm.

(jazzinfamily.com)

This is your second album, A Seeker’s Dream. How does it build upon your previous work, and in what ways has your artistic voice evolved since then?

Both of my albums, I would say, are explorations inwards. That’s really where it all begins for me. I always draw my inspiration from that place — this inner connection, this dialogue with my inner self and my higher self, if you will. But even though both albums come from that same source, for me, it’s not so much about building upon my previous work but more about revealing different aspects of myself — and of my music.

My first album, Odyssey feels like a book…a story being told. A quite personal story about my search inwards, it‘s more of a singer-songwriter album, but with jazzy improvisations woven in — on saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute. A Seeker’s Dream, on the other hand, is more of an instrumental album. It still integrates vocals, but the main focus is definitely on the saxophone. And yet, the pieces still evolve in a lyrical, almost storytelling way.

I’ve never been someone who likes to think in genres. I find labels like that artistically limiting, you know. They tend to divide music into easily marketable pieces instead of seeing it as a whole. That’s why I’ve never wanted to stay within any boundaries — not a genre, not within given structures, not an expectation. So both albums are quite open — or maybe even without genre. I’ve always felt drawn to different influences, and I think they naturally come through in the music. They tell a lot about where I’m coming from. But overall, for me, this journey with music is — and always will be a process of evolution. Of growing, of connecting more deeply with her. It’s a path of ultimately becoming one withnmusic itself. That’s something I’m always reaching for.

The album title and pieces like “As Far As the Heart Can See” suggest dreamlike inspiration. Can you share how dreams or moments of introspection shaped these compositions?

For me, dreams are just… another kind of reality, you know. It’s a space where the Self feels more deeply connected to the universe than we usually experience in what we call reality. In dreams, we can sense what’s beyond the veil — beyond that three-dimensional illusion we live in. And I feel like every track on this album carries a bit of that emotion. When I compose or improvise, it’s as if sound remembers. It brings up emotions you never had the words for… or maybe didn’t even know were there. But somehow, they’ve always been inside you. Music, for me, then becomes like a mirror — it reflects your own vibration, your inner and higher self.

As to As Far As the Heart Can See, the melody of this track came to me in a dream — vivid and complete, note by note — a gift from someone special I never had the chance to meet in this life, but always wished I could. It was a dream about Fontaine’s father, a saxophonist himself. Actually Fontaine had planned to make an album with him, but he died shortly before they could. In my dream his father had sent me this melody. So in the end, it wasn’t an album they could make together here… but through that dream, through that other reality, he still found his way onto at least one track just in another way than they had planned…And that, to me, is the kind of mystery that music holds — that connection that goes beyond time, beyond what we can see.

You draw inspiration from spiritual jazz legends such as John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Wayne Shorter, and Jan Garbarek. How do you honour their influence while crafting a highly personal and contemporary voice?

The way I honour them is first and foremost on a spiritual level. For me, it’s about this perpetual search…this process of connecting from your inner self to your higher self, to your true self… and ultimately to the creator, through music. When you reach that place, you realise that we’re all one. You find the creator in music itself when you connect through these other dimensions. And that’s really the meaning behind A Seeker’s Dream.

But also on the musical level, that honour for the great jazz legends goes even deeper than my conscious awareness. Through listening to them over the years, something of their spirit, their sound, became part of my own conception of music — and of sound itself.

Take Jan Garbarek, for example. His album Dis completely turned my world upside down. It’s this record that really set me on the path of music. When I first started playing saxophone, I remember wanting to make music like him because when you’re young, that’s what you do, right? You want to sound like your idols. But at some point, you realise you have to find your own voice. So no, I didn’t end up making music like Garbarek, and I never tried to imitate his sound. But still, when I listen back to my own music, I can hear traces, not of imitation, but of influence, of emotional connection. His music somehow found its way into mine, unconsciously, without even an attempt of me doing so. It’s like his sound lives somewhere in me now. Not as something I copied, but as something that resonated so deeply that it became part of who I am as a musician.

Your partnership with Fontaine Burnett is central to the album. How did your shared artistic trust shape the arrangements, instrumentation, and the overall sense of flow?

Fontaine and I make music together daily on a profound level of connection. Most of the tracks emerged through this deep musical and emotional connection. When we make music together, there are no boundaries. It feels like stepping beyond ourselves and tapping into something greater: It is a bond of artistic synergy, transformation, and love —boundless, deeply spiritual, and profoundly meaningful to me, even across time and experience. It is like making love. It is something we both highly value, since it is not very common to be partners in life and in music.

In these intimate moments when we make music together we spend a lot of time exploring musical ideas and instrumentation, both electronic and acoustic.. So it is a logic consequence that this influenced the album.

The album blends Nordic jazz, ambient soundscapes, trip-hop grooves, and cinematic textures. How do you approach merging such diverse influences into a cohesive musical narrative?

I feel music as colors and emotions. For me it is like painting. The different music influences are the colors and I just follow my intuition of creating a painting, a painting of sound.

Tracks like “Gift Us Peace” and “Remember” engage with both personal transformation and social consciousness. How do you balance introspective reflection with commentary on broader human concerns?

The deeper I go into myself, the more I value the human experience. I’ve always been very sensitive — very empathetic to my surroundings and to what’s happening in the world. And the more I grow, the more I realize that, in the end, we are all one. So when I feel that urge to change something — to make the world a little fairer, a little kinder — I know it has to start with me. If I want to see less injustice, I have to start by being a better version of myself every day. That’s where real change begins.

And I think living a life in music naturally makes you empathetic. You can’t really make music without empathy — it’s impossible. Music comes from feeling, about being open to yourself, to others, to what’s going on around you, to what others go through. For me, the path of music has always been both a volition and a vocation. It’s something I chose, but it also feels like it chose me. So in that sense, giving a voice to people who can’t speak for themselves just feels like a natural consequence of that empathy. It’s not just an artistic decision — it’s a calling. Especially when you create what I like to call conscious music.

With “Intro” and “Outro” framing the album, how did you envision the listener’s journey through the soundscape, and how did that influence sequencing and pacing?

The Intro and Outro really serve as gateways into this realm of dream reality. They’re like bookends — opening and closing the space — and they carry, in a way, the imprint of the future. Once you enter this realm, the story begins. It’s like going on a journey inward. Each track feels like a different chapter of that book. And if you look at the titles — which I chose very consciously, according to what I was envisioning and feeling in the music — you can almost sense the story behind them. It’s not a collection of separate short stories, where each piece just stands on its own. It’s more like one continuous narrative — a book that unfolds from beginning to end. Every chapter, every track, weaves into the next, like an ongoing story of this inner journey…moving ever inward, seeking that quiet center within — that place of stillness that gifts us peace.

And as you can see, it’s that call for Gift Us Peace (which is the last track before the Outro) where the seeker’s dream comes to an end. Not in the sense of having arrived, but rather in the realization of the need for it. That quiet understanding that the journey itself is the seeking — and that peace is something we must keep reaching for, both on a personal and a universal level.

You perform on tenor and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet, and vocals, and also arrange horns and strings. How do you decide which instruments or textures best convey the emotion of each composition?

As I mentioned before, for me, music is really about colors and emotions. I think of it almost like painting. Every instrument, every section of instruments, has its own color — and behind each color is an emotion. When I’m listening to what music needs in my compositions, I imagine it in color and feeling. Then I choose the instruments almost like choosing brushes or pigments, picking what I want to ‘paint’ with to bring the picture I’ve envisioned to life. It’s like letting the music guide me, and in the end, the painting appears — in sound.

The album is described as being recorded with intention and vulnerability. Were there moments during the sessions that felt especially transformative or revealing for you?

There weren’t really any special moments — it’s more of a revealing process that happens while I’m creating, and even beyond that. Many of my compositions begin with a melody and a very open state I find myself in. And then, as the music evolves with harmonies, rhythms, arrangements or even words, I start to see images. Often, after the whole process of creating, when I sit down and listen, those single images begin to connect. Like pieces of a puzzle forming one whole picture. It’s an eye-opening experience…and I begin to understand where the music and images were coming from. Sometimes, memories surface — ones I wasn’t even consciously aware of. Maybe from this lifetime… or perhaps from somewhere beyond.

If someone immerses themselves fully in A Seeker’s Dream, what kind of reflection, feeling, or inner journey do you hope they take away?

For me, my music mirrors my own vibration — it’s where I’m at, what I’m feeling, what I’m seeking, when sound becomes a way to connect, across space, culture, even time. When that kind of resonance happens, it’s almost like magic because it points to something much greater than ourselves. I think that’s what moves me the most — those moments when the boundary between you and everything else just dissolves for a second. Every piece I write feels like a small step into the unknown. And I love that space. It’s where discovery happens. It’s where I get to learn something new about myself. It’s the realm of the seeker’s dream. My hope is that the listener might feel something similar — that they find within themselves that same universal resonance. That my music might serve as a kind of guide — a mirror, maybe — leading the listener inward, helping them uncover and reveal parts of themselves. Almost like a soundtrack to their own inner journey.

(Jazzviews.net)