American composer, pianist, arranger, and bandleader Carla Bley passed away in October 2023, but left a rich musical legacy that was whimsical, nonconformist, masterful, often funny, at times irreverent, and always profound, inspiring us to transcend opposites.
The new and first female artistic director of the French Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ), which this year celebrates its 40th anniversary, flutist and composer Sylvaine Hélary, sees Bley as a role model and shares with her a similar irreverent and genre-defying approach. Hélary has forged a singularly cross-disciplinary universe throughout her work at the confluence of jazz, rock, chamber music, and experimental music, exploring timbre and surprising alliances, including with the poetry of Emily Dickinson and PJ Harvey, as well as with Steve Coleman, Marc Ducret, and Sarah Murcia.
So it was only natural that Hélary’s inaugural program as the artistic director for the 17-musician incarnation of ONJ (including a string quartet) would celebrate the music of Bley.
With Carla is a joyous and irreverent tribute to the great iconoclast of jazz, which extends and plays with Bley’s compositions with the clever and sometimes provocative arrangements of ONJ’s reed player, Rémi Sciuto.
ONJ offers a panoramic journey of Bley’s rich musical universe with a suite of eleven pieces, mostly from the early seventies until the late nineties. These pieces span Bley’s most iconic compositions («Musique Mécanique», «Útviklingssang», «Ups and Downs», and its reprise …«And Ups Again»), to orchestral frescoes («Major»), via gentle or humorous songs («Very Very Simple»), chamber moments, and unbridled rhythms («Wrong Key Donkey»), one vocal piece («In India» from Tropic Appetites), sung by violinist Juliette Serrad, and a cover of American composer and painter Carl Ruggles («Exaltation»).
The artistic freedom that ONJ, Hélary, and Sciuto exercised in this project allows the listener to enjoy Bley’s singular compositional strategies and arrangements with a modern-day big-band aesthetic. But, simultaneously, With Carla suggests a wise and compassionate perspective on Bley’s magnificent and seminal work, with Sciuto’s imaginative, often disruptive arrangements, adopting a similar, nonconformist, free spirit that Bley had. It is a highly heartfelt and emotional journey, performed beautifully. A musical celebration where fantasy and comic power rub shoulders with rigor, exacting standards, and originality.
Eyal Hareuveni
Sylvaine Hélary (flute), Rémi Sciuto (alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, clarinet, musical saw), Léa Ciechelski (alto saxophone, flute), Hugues Mayot (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet), Sylvain Bardiau (trumpet), Quentin Ghomari (trumpet, flugelhorn), Jessica Simon (trombone), Mathilde Fèvre (French horn), Fanny Meteier (tuba), Anne Le Pape (violin), Laure Franz (violin), Guillaume Roy (viola), Juliette Serrad (cello, voice), Antonin Rayon (piano, Hammond organ), Illya Amar (vibraphone, percussions), Sébastien Boisseau (double bass), Mathias Allamane (double bass), Franck Vaillant (drums)
