Jeux by Orchestre National de Jazz - Ensemble intercontemporain

The Pleasure of Playing

Frédéric Maurin's tenure at the helm of the ONJ comes to a close with "Jeux", which brings full circle, like a perfect cycle, all the programs he has implemented, all the while opening up future prospects for both the institution and the man who was its Artistic Director from 2019 to 2024. It saw him bring to fruition what he had begun with the creation of the Ping Machine large ensemble in 2005 and give an overview, with the composers and guest conductors of his ONJ, of some of the great exogenous heritages that have nourished jazz in the quest for an ever-renewed balance between writing and improvisation. 

Following the invitation extended to Steve Lehman to collaborate at IRCAM on the "Ex Machina" program exploring the frontiers of spectral music and artificial intelligence, Maurin was keen to break down the last wall (which was just waiting to fall) between jazz and contem-porary music, as well as between the two institutions that are the ONJ (Orchestre National de Jazz) and EIC (Ensemble intercontemporain). Based on voluntary recruitment among the soloists of these two formations, an orchestra with equal representation in every sense of the word was formed around three composers: Andy Emler, who draws less on the strict jazz tradition than his organ playing and the teachings of Marius Constant, not to mention his initial experience with rock music; Sofia Avramidou, a composer who studied at IRCAM with Philippe Manoury and Georges Aperghis, among others; and Frédéric Maurin himself, whose background in rock and studies both at a jazz school and in composition have allowed him to turn the transversality of musical languages into a real vocation.

For those who attended the rehearsals and now discover the recording of the premiere concert, it is astounding to note how effortlessly this collective of performers-improvisers took to the proposals of the three composers; a naturalness that is reflected in the fluidity of the sequences from one score to the next in each of the four suites, the first of which unfolds from a collective improvisation as if it were a mere warm-up.

Of course, those familiar with Andy Emler's music will recognize his contribution and aesthetic, at once very open to solo initiative, yet articulated around the rhythmic and orchestral plasticity of identifiable grooves and relatively legible melodical turns scattered with counterpoints and orchestral tuttis that are clearly delineated although often unexpected. In contrast, the inextricable nature of Sofia Avramidou's masses and textures is the result of a stretching of time according to instrumental and gestural prescriptions of extreme rhythmic precision over a melodic content most often left to the initiative of the improviser-performer. Frédéric Maurin's writing develops between these two demeanors, his experience in the spectral field being harnessed to the letter in the finale of "Tone Box - Part 1", irrigating the rest of his "well-tempered" scores through his shaping of timbral matter.

The pleasure that derives from listening to these tunes is none other than that of the fourteen musicians as they blended their know-how, letting themselves be drawn onto each other's turf in an atmosphere of complicity, as evidenced in particular by the piece entitled "Deux clarinettes", a celebration of a friendship between Catherine Delaunay (ONJ) and Alain Billard (EIC) that dates back to their studies of that instrument under transversality champion Jacques Di Donato.

Franck Bergerot

Created in 1986 by the French Ministry of Culture, Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ) is one of the leading jazz large ensemble in Europe. Since 2019, the orchestra is led by composer Frédéric Maurin.

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