Ex Machina - The Orchestre National de Jazz

Mon Oct 03 2022 at 07:30 pm to 09:00 pm

La Maison Française | Washington

Villa Albertine Washington DC
Publisher/HostVilla Albertine Washington DC
Ex Machina - The Orchestre National de Jazz
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Ex Machina - The Orchestre National de Jazz on October 3rd at La Maison Française
About this Event

and present Ex Machina, a creation conceived by the American saxophonist Steve Lehman and Frédéric Maurin, artistic director of the ONJ.

Duration: 1h20

Both musicians share a number of aesthetic questions and ambitions that make it possible to compare their respective careers. Both have proposed material that has been widely praised as music that has inventive forms, with sophistication in its palettes of timbres, and elaborate patterns in which the music can be played, notably the manner in which the soloist integrates into the construction of the different pieces they have written.

Their shared ambition to go beyond traditional orchestral limits has particularly fostered their strong interest in the theories of spectral music, a contemporary practice notably represented by such French composers as Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail (under whom Steve Lehman studied at New York’s Columbia University). Based on the decomposition of the music’s acoustic properties, spectral music has allowed the emergence of new composing principles and orchestration techniques, notably in microtonal compositions that favor merged perceptions of the timbres, revolutionising the impressions that can emanate from orchestral works.

This project is the result of a collaboration with the Musical Representations team at IRCAM, headed by Gérard Assayag, and explores for the first time the possibilities of interaction between the instrumentalists and the machine within a large jazz orchestra. By integrating devices created using Jérôme Nika’s DYCI2 environment in the composition process and in the soloists’ improvisations in real-time, the computer becomes, in turn, a generator of electronic orchestrations for the composers and an improvisation partner for the musicians.

Presented in February 2022 at the 32nd Festival Présences de Radio France and then at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, this program, which also welcomes two of Steve Lehman's partners, trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and vibraphonist Chris Dingman, proposes a voyage through that haven’t been heard before, a journey imagined with a musician who symbolizes the most vivid and daring inventions that today’s jazz has to offer.

An IRCAM-Centre Pompidou coproduction. With the support of the ERC Advanced Grant REACH project led by Gérard Assayag and supported by the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 program, the Centre National de la Musique, the SACEM and the SPEDIDAM.

The Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ) tour has been made possible through Jazz & New Music, a program of Villa Albertine and FACE Foundation, in partnership with the French Embassy in the United States with support from the French Ministry of Culture, Institut français, SACEM (Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique) and the CNM (Centre National de la Musique).


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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

La Maison Française, Embassy of France, Washington, United States

Tickets

USD 20.00 to USD 30.00

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