Marquis Collective is a new band from Cluj which debuted last year with their album, "Metamorphosis". The quartet has already performed at important festivals in the country, as well as France and Italy. It has more events lined up in the upcoming period, but we'll be getting more information from saxophonist Patricia Marchiș, the leader of Marquis Collective. Welcome to Radio România Muzical.

I'm glad to be here, thank you for the invitation.

First of all, tell us who your bandmates are. You have been in this version for a relatively short time.

Yes, members kept changing, but the colleagues I recorded the album and organized this tour with are Marius Roje on keyboard, Cristina Lazariuc on bass guitar and Sebastian Arvai on drums.

What can you tell us about the album? You're a traditional jazz band, more or less, a quartet with saxophone, but your sound isn't traditional at all.

Our album is a concept album and, as the title suggest, it's an album that talks about change, in the way that every piece presents a different aesthetic. As for the general sound, it's a fusion between multiple genres - classical, jazz, rock, funk sometimes, Oriental music - and that's why it's somewhat unusual for the Romanian jazz scene.

Let's talk a bit about your background, where you studied. I know you began in Cluj, but you've also been to France.

I studied classical saxophone at the National Academy of Music in Cluj, then I studied at the Academy in Strasbourg. Right now I'm pursuing a PhD at the Academy in Cluj. My background is that of a classical saxophone player, not a jazz saxophone player.

Since you mentioned it, you have also been active in this field, you've performed alongside many orchestras.

I performed with the Cluj Philharmonic, the Oradea Philharmonic, as well as the Sibiu Philharmonic and the London City Philharmonic. This was last year.

Let's get back to jazz, because this is the Romanian Jazz Society section. Tell us about your upcoming projects, about your next concerts, and about what you did in the studio, because, from what we know, you've been in the studio recently.

For now, we're having concerts to promote our album, "Metamorphosis". We actually launched this album last year, in Paris, but we've only now found the time to present it to the Romanian public. We performed in Cluj, Bucharest, Baia Mare, Târgu Mureș, and Timișoara and Iași are coming up next week. Regarding what we recorded, this'll be our next album, but it'll be a trio of saxophone, cello and drums. That's all I'll say about this album for now, because it's still a surprise.

Can you share the exact times and places of your performances in Iași and Timișoara?

In Iași, we'll be performing on March 12th, at Acaju, with the help of Vlad Stoica, who's organizing the concert there, and in Timișoara we'll see you on March 14th at Underground Escape Hub, where we'll have a double concert with the band Nonconformist Anthology.

About the album "Metamorphosis", I'd like to mention that many of the songs have videos on YouTube. What can you tell us about these videos?

These videos are how we started promoting out album, before we started recording the actual pieces. We did it because we wanted our music to reach a wide audience and nowadays everything revolves around visuals, so something like this was necessary.

They look very good. I imagine you worked with a video crew.

Of course. A professional crew worked on the video production.