ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE JAZZ

Appointed for four years as the new Artistic Director of the Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ), guitarist and composer Frédéric Maurin is set to inaugurate his project in January 2019.
 

For the launch next January, the concept of Frédéric's project is based on an intergenerational orchestra, with musicians, men and women, who will be welcoming guest soloists from both France and Europe.

With a mission to reflect and highlight the diversity existing in creative jazz today, the project proposed by the ONJ's new artistic director represents a totally open approach that combines collaborations with works commissioned from French and foreign guest composers. In the course of its mandate, for example, the ONJ will be presenting: an electric tribute to the great jazz figure Ornette Coleman with arrangements written by Fred Pallem; a collective composition for orchestra and four voices with vocalists among the most exceptional to be heard in jazz today; a carte blanche invitation to French pianist/composer Eve Risser; and a collaboration with American saxophonist/composer Steve Lehman in association with the IRCAM. Each of these programmes gives preference to orchestral material that is made-to-measure, thanks to an ONJ that will vary in size: its geometry has the advantage of giving the formation the ability to open its ranks to a greater number of musicians as necessary.

A privileged space for creation and experiment that also aims to enhance the repertoire, the ONJ, under its new director Frédéric Maurin, today forms a foundation for a project that has even more ambition in catering to a broader range of interests, sharing the ONJ as a tool to serve jazz in all its many forms.