Their many appearances at prestigious festivals such as Jazz à Vienne, Beaune and Mâcon Festivals, “Jazz dans le Parc” or, the International Rhino Jazz Festival…During these last years, this professional big band has adopted a pedagogical approach by collaborating with music schools, providing an original repertoire for large orchestras (such as string and wind orchestras, big bands or even combos…) who are performing with the ŒUF. A special attention has been paid to approaching collective improvisation, such as “sound-painting” and the repertoire was adjusted to the level of the orchestra. Five years later, it seemed necessary to “note down” a part of the repertoire by recording a first album entitled “Eclosion”.
2. Presentation of the “Cascade” recording project (in April 2012)
The recording project of the album entitled “Cascade” is in keeping with that of “Eclosion”. After three years of work, it results in an original repertoire written by Pierre BALDY-MOULINIER, composed specifically for the skills of the band soloists. This new opus revolves around new areas of research: the musical investigation into new musical genres, into a larger variety of tones and timbres for the band and it includes the study of long pieces. All musicians live in the Rhône-Alpes area or came from it and had gained – or will gain – a national reputation. The album is composed of six tracks, and among them, is a three-movement piece entitled “La Vie ou la Mort” (meaning “Life or Death”), which is a sort of tuba concerto. It clearly aimed at making jazz music more “democratic” and more open to a larger public; without losing track that it is an experimental music as in a “research lab”, sustained by numerous musical genres. For that album, we invited a well-known artistic director, Pierre DREVET, a world-famous trumpet player and arranger, who played, among other bands, with the B.J.O., Caratini, the O.N.J., Maria Schneider... The album was then mixed in Belgium by Gyuri SPIES, the present sound engineer of the Bruxelles Jazz Orchestra.
