Based in New York, Canadian pianist and composer Kris Davis has established herself as a key figure in contemporary jazz, driven by her singular talent and the audacious productions of her Pyroclastic Records label. Winner of a Grammy Award in 2023 and named “Pianist of the Year” in 2025 by DownBeat magazine, she has collected a host of distinctions. Her influences, from Messiaen to Charlie Parker, nourish a music that is demanding but always luminous. In 2024, backed by two first-rate companions - drummer Johnathan Blake and bassist Robert Hurst - she signed Run the Gauntlet, a trio album paying vibrant tribute to six great pianists, including Geri Allen and Carla Bley. This concert naturally resonates with the creation of the Orchestre national de jazz With Carla, directed by Sylvaine Hélary, who had already invited Kris Davis for her Spring Roll project.

For her first program as artistic director of the ONJ, flutist and composer Sylvaine Hélary pays tribute to Carla Bley, an unclassifiable figure in jazz who died in October 2023. Pianist, composer, magnificent arranger and bandleader, but also rebellious, shy, wild, adventurous and fiercely independent, the American artist left behind a treasure trove of scores and recordings. To revisit Carla Bley's compositions, Sylvaine Hélary and the inventive saxophonist Rémi Sciuto have immersed themselves in her protean universe and offer a program that navigates between orchestral frescoes and more chamber-like moments, gentle songs and unbridled rhythms, highlighting Carla Bley's distinctive sound palette, captivating rhythms, humor and bold harmonies.

Our Jazzpassage events are Franco-German evenings programmed in partnership with Offenburg's Kulturbüro, with the support of AJC.