Born in 1984 in a musical family, French jazz musician Jonathan Orland began playing music during his childhood in Paris, starting with the piano and the clarinet. In his early teenage years, he developed a passion for jazz and taught himself the saxophone before beginning formal studies with Thomas Savy, Tom Buckner, and André Villégier.
"Jonathan Orland is a superb musician."
- Bill Pierce
At age 22 Jonathan was offered a scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston where he studied with George Garzone, Hal Crook, Bill Pierce and Greg Osby. After finishing his studies at Berklee, Jonathan headed for Montreal, where he completed a Master’s Degree in Jazz Performance at McGill University.
Back in Paris, Jonathan released his first album as a leader ‘Homes’, in 2012, on the label BeeJazz, featuring George Garzone.
"Jonathan Orland has proven to be an exceptional musician and player."
- George Garzone
In 2015, he released a second album, ‘Small Talk’, featuring Nelson Veras, Yoni Zelnik and Donald Kontomanou, released on Paris Jazz Underground.
Currently living in Montreal, he leads a trio with Cole Birney-Stewart and Michel Lambert, has been an active member of Jean-Michel Pilc’s Improvisation Workshop and played duo with him. He regularly plays with Kevin Dean and subs in Joe Sullivan’s big band.
His third album as a leader, Something Joyful, with French musicians Olivier Hutman, Yoni Zelnik and Ariel Tessier, will be released by SteepleChase Records on February 15th 2021.
Jonathan has played in many venues across the world and toured in France, Eastern Europe and Asia.
Over the last few years, Jonathan has been an active sideman in Paris (Michel Reis Paris Quartet, Sextet Gui Duvignau, Peter Peter, Ibeyi, Vincent Touchard, Xavier Thollard).
He also plays Klezmer and nourishes a passion for Balkan music. He has co-lead a quintet, Valea Antos, with clarinetist Adrian Receanu, playing a repertoire of Romanian, Moldavan and Bulgarian songs.
He also plays free improvisation in a duo with drummer Ariel Tessier called Forgotten Waters, which released an album in 2017, and currently has a duo with pianist Stéphane Tsapis, with whom he recently recorded an album. Currently sharing his time between Montreal and Paris, he is active on the Montreal scene and has played with artists such as Kevin Dean, Joe Sullivan, Jean-Michel Pilc and John Hollenbeck.
Jonathan is passionate about sharing his love of music and has acquired experience teaching the saxophone, clarinet, theory and improvisation in various settings over the last 15 years.
He has taught in conservatories the Paris area, university courses on jazz improvisation and ensembles, as well as private lessons in his studio.
He holds a Doctorate in Music from McGill University where he investigated the links between preparation and spontaneity in improvisation.
The thesis is available at the following link:
https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/papers/4t64gs98h?locale=en
THESIS ABSTRACT
The purpose of the research described in this thesis is to investigate my improvisational language and relate it to my preparation. In the first part of this dissertation, I explore the dialectic tensions between individuality and tradition, and preparation and spontaneity, in the context of jazz improvisation. I use examples from jazz history and expose my own perspective, based on my experience as a performer. This is also the opportunity to discuss the analogy between music and language, applied to jazz improvisation, and to introduce the notion of storytelling. This reflection serves as a basis to investigate my improvisational language through a twofold approach. In the second chapter of the dissertation (corresponding to the first part of the investigation), I establish a methodology based on the hermeneutic interactions between performance and preparation, applied to the formal analysis of recordings of my improvisations. In the third chapter (corresponding to the second part of the investigation), I use critical listening as a tool to investigate my performative experience in the context of an improvised saxophone solo experiment. These two methods complement each other, the first one being useful to expand my improvisational language, adapting my preparation to target specific strategies, and the second allowing to gain insight on more elusive aspects that escape formal analysis and contribute to the storytelling (overarching construction of the improvised discourse, time feel and other aspects of execution).
