ONJ Youth Orchestra #5

Residency in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, France

In 2024, the Orchestre des Jeunes embraced two eras by revisiting the repertoires written by Claude Barthélemy during his two terms at the helm of the ONJ, first from 1989 to 1991 and again from 2002 to 2005. Under the guitarist’s leadership, this new team, composed of 13 young French and European musicians with a sound engineer enrolled in the Music, Sound, and Image Department of the CNSM in Paris, took up residence in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region for a six-month series of residencies and concerts, from January to June 2024. The Orchestra performed at the CCR in Limoges, Espace Culturel Roger Hanin in Soustons – a concert as part of the South Town Jazz Festival – and at the Clément Janequin Conservatory in Châtellerault. As in previous years, other events were organized in the Paris region, as the Orchestra played at Le Triton then at Pavillon de la Sirène for a concert and the public presentation of the third edition of the Composition Academy.

This flamboyant fifth graduating class revived Claude Barthélemy’s signature style, an ambitious and resolutely hybrid jazz, borrowing from rock as well as contemporary, pop, and traditional music, with a few singular arrangements of pieces by John Coltrane or Hermeto Pascoal.