Appointed for a four year mandate (January 2019 to December 2022) as the new Artistic Director of the 'Orchestre National de Jazz' (ONJ), Frédéric Maurin, a composer and guitarist who has enjoyed a brilliant 14-year career at the helm of Ping Machine—a formation unanimously recognized as a reference for the jazz scene in Europe—has recently inaugurated the twelfth chapter of the artistic adventures of the ONJ, France's National Jazz Orchestra.

Frédéric Maurin has created an outward-looking project for this new version of the Orchestra to put an active policy into practise: commissioned works and other collaborations that explore contemporary performance and invention, by means of contributions not only from composers with singular styles but also from invited artists of multiple horizons as well as personalities in other live entertainment fields. The leading programmes in Frédéric Maurin's tenure are:
- First, a tribute to the great jazz icon Ornette Coleman around arrangements written by Fred Pallem;
- a collective composition for orchestra and 4 voices accompanied onstage by a video creation;
- a carte blanche invitation to pianist Eve Risser;
- and, in association with IRCAM, a quest in computer-assisted sound experimentation imagined by American saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman.

For the first time in ONJ history, in a tenure marked by new creations, there will also be shows dedicated to a young audience, notably with the musical tale Dracula that revolves around the vampire myth, plus a marionette adaptation of Frank Zappa's 'Adventures of Greggery Peccary'.

Each ONJ programme favours experimentation with forms and formats thanks to a variable geometry big band that is inter-generational and comprised of French and foreign musicians both men and women. The big band features a varying cast specially adapted to each repertoire with material that increases the instrumentation possibilities across the spectrum of new creations, while also allowing the ONJ to welcome a greater number of artists to its ranks.

In addition, Frédéric Maurin's 4-year tenure has allowed him to create the ONJ's Youth Orchestra. This is a brand-new initiative, an ensemble comprised of students from music schools and conservatories under the direction of former ONJ leaders. The members of this young people's orchestra will be working on new readings and interpretations of the ONJ's material since its inception, with the ambition of enhancing and transmitting the incredible richness and diversity of the music that the ONJ and its variants have been producing for the past 30 years.

As a privileged space for creation, experimenting, and multiple encounters, but also for adding to the awareness of a national heritage, today, the ONJ, under the artistic direction of Frédéric Maurin, is the bearer of an ambitious project whose general-interest missions have been amplified into a sharing tool that serves jazz in all its multiple aspects.

An exciting new chapter in the writing…

As a guitarist reared to the sound of Jimi Hendrix, King Crimson or Frank Zappa, Frédéric Maurin quickly abandoned a career as an engineer to devote himself entirely to music, pursuing courses in jazz and classical composition in parallel.

For 14 years Frédéric has composed and conducted the repertoire of Ping Machine, a 15-piece music ensemble that is today unanimously recognized as a reference on the new jazz scene in Europe. With this ensemble, he has developed singular music coming from an abundant and diverse imagination. Ping Machine is a state-regulated ensemble — through CERNI and DRAC Île-de-France/Ministry of Culture — with the support of SACEM, SPEDIDAM, ADAMI and the Region Île-de-France.

Largely influenced by musicians and composers ranging from György Ligeti to Steve Coleman, not to mention Charles Mingus, Meshuggah and Gérard Grisey, Frédéric Maurin has always endeavoured, in the extreme precision of his music writing — which questions not only the musical language but also the forms usually employed in jazz and other improvised music — to offer works whose core preserves an energy and generosity that allow a collective dive into a parallel world.

Apart from composing, Frédéric Maurin is also a guitarist who has appeared in a number of projects as a sideman, and for many years he has chosen to work closely with collectives in order to better the conditions in which the music he champions can achieve wider recognition. Between 2011 and 2017, he was the President of the Grands Formats Federation representing artists who play music in large ensembles or formats, a Federation that today represents 57 professional orchestras and more than 1000 musicians spread throughout France.