ONJ Youth Orchestra #6

The ONJ Youth Orchestra (Orchestre des Jeunes de l’ONJ) dedicates its 6th season to music written by Didier Levallet for the Orchestre National de Jazz, which he conducted from 1997 to 2000. To accompany the new 13 young French and European musicians, the conductor is pianist and composer Sophia Domancich, a former soloist with his orchestra.

The repertoire includes compositions played and recorded on the three albums that marked the ONJ’s career at the time: “Deep Feelings”, “Sequences” and “O.N.J Express”. Under the leadership of Sophia Domancich, the musicians of the Orchestre des Jeunes take them on, to convey the spirit that animates them, adapting and enriching them in keeping with Didier Levallet’s own idea of form and overflow: “The musicians are there to bring the composition to life, and even to overflow it”. The program also includes an arrangement of Carla Bley’s Vashkar and another of Gérard Marais’s Cornouailles.

From January 2025, the Orchestra will be based in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France, with residencies at the Conservatoire de Bourges, the CRI de Dreux, the Conservatoire d’Orléans and the Petit Faucheux, as well as other venues in Paris.

An unprecedented collective adventure, to plunge back into the musical history of the Orchestre National de Jazz!