Friday, March 16   9:00 p.m.
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When you first start listening to Marit Larsen’s CD "Under the Surface," you picture a shy young girl, peeking out from around a corner. You know that you’re only seeing a bit of what she has to offer. The more you listen, the more you realize just how intriguing both Larsen and her music really are. And then you just can’t wait to find out exactly what else she has up her sleeve.

"Under the Surface" is the aptly-titled debut solo CD from this extraordinary young Norwegian. At just 22 years old, Larsen has created an album that is both beautiful and playful – and that also reveals a maturity far beyond her years. Not surprising, considering that she has already held her own in the rough-and-tumble world of the music business for a decade.

Larsen released her first album together with her childhood friend Marion Raven at the age of 12. That release (a children’s album) was nominated for Norway’s equivalent to the Grammy, and by the time she was 13 Larsen was inspired to turn her considerable talents to songwriting. “I got ideas everywhere – every conversation could become a song,” she says. Those songs and her love of all things musical led to her and Raven to form the band M2M. When M2M was signed to Atlantic Records, Larsen found herself a worldwide star at the tender age of 16.

What followed can only be described as a whirlwind of activity. The two young girls spent several years touring the world, making appearances all over the globe. Quite the exciting life – but also an exhausting one. “With all that traveling the creativity just vanished. We were going from airport to hotel to studio – mostly talking to journalists in country after country and hardly playing music at all,” Larsen says. “We would just take a couple of months before going into the studio to write each new record.” While this kind of creative pressure has been known to crush even the most experienced artists, it seems to have tempered Larsen’s writing abilities into a finely-honed skill.

Now, she revels in the freedom that working on "Under the Surface" has allowed her. “I've composed these songs just for the joy of writing, not to fit a particular project or trend,” says Larsen. “Fragments of them have been hiding and bubbling inside of me – under the surface, if you like – ever since I started writing music. Up until now they have been my little secret. And while I’ve written a lot of songs over the last three years that didn’t make it onto the album, that just means that the ones that did make it are special; they all serve a different purpose. It's beautiful to see the songs take on a life of their own, but it was also very important to me to make an album, not just a collection of songs,” she explains.

And what an album it is. From the shamelessly catchy “Don’t Save Me” to the heartbreakingly painful “Solid Ground” to the fun-filled "Only a Fool" (all three of which have gone Top 10) Larsen has created an incredibly cohesive album that reveals just how much she has learned from her unique experiences. Not only does she have an amazing sense of what kind of music people want to listen to, but she also proves that she has the ability to survive and thrive in the occasionally vicious world of the music industry.

And she has done so with tremendous grace, without losing herself the way that so many artists who achieve success at a young age have done. What comes across both in her songs and in person is Larsen’s remarkable honesty, her genuine warmth and the joy she takes in her music and her life. These also come across loud and clear to her audience each and every time she takes the stage – and the crowd at every show knows that they are part of something special.

The shy, young girl with the great big talent has blossomed into a very rare flower, indeed.