Orchestre National de Jazz «Ex Machina»

feat. Steve Lehman, Jonathan Finlayson & Chris Dingman

The Orchestre National de Jazz and IRCAM present Ex Machina, a creation conceived by American saxophonist Steve Lehman and artistic director of the ONJ Frédéric Maurin. In the course of their respective careers, both have offered music that has been widely praised for its inventive forms, rich palette of timbres, elaborate rhythmic patterns, and reflexion on the fusion of composition and improvisation in the construction of the pieces.


Their shared ambition to go beyond traditional orchestral limits has particularly fostered their strong interest in spectral music, a contemporary movement notably represented by such French composers as Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail. Using the acoustic properties of sound, spectral music has allowed the emergence of new composing principles and orchestration techniques, notably in microtonal compositions that favor merged perceptions of the timbres, revolutionizing the impressions that can emanate from orchestral works.


This project is the result of a collaboration with Jérôme Nika and 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; the computer becomes a generator of electronic orchestrations for the composers and an improvisation partner for the musicians.

Created in February 2022 at the 32nd Festival Présences de Radio France in Paris, this program, which also welcomes two of Steve Lehman’s partners, trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and vibraphonist Chris Dingman, proposes a journey with some musicians who symbolize the most vivid and daring inventions that today’s jazz has to offer.