ORPHA PROJECT

Presentation

The Orpha project was born from the meeting of personalities in the current music scene who desired to break free from stylistic boundaries.

Originally, the repertoire combined selected excerpts from Gluck’s opera “Orpheus and Eurydice” with various jazz influences and a strong presence of improvised music, in response to a commission for a theatrical staging.

Driven by the desire to improvise, much like Baroque musicians did in their time, we enjoyed exploring our musical universes and diverse influences on the universal themes of this opera: passionate love, the power of music and singing, death, and the underworld.

From this experience and a parallel reading of the psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi on trauma, the name ORPHA emerged. Indeed, Ferenczi used this expression to refer to organizing vital instincts that bring madness to combat death impulses caused by distress, suffering, loss of hope, etc. It is a vast realm of the human soul to express, through music, poetry, singing, and improvisation, the richness of our differences.

Similarly, the trio Hestin-Saada-Bort, which has existed for several years with the album “MANEGE(s)” (Promiseland/Modus – dist: Socadisc), joined forces with the singer and vocalist Nathalie Duong, as well as saxophonist Alexandra Grimal, who recently joined the project and is featured on the album.

The voice in all its forms—sung, spoken, noisy, chanted—holds a special place, and the words of Nathalie’s texts, as well as those of the poet Jocelyne Clément, have a privileged position.

We have retained the essence of the initial project to allow it to evolve more freely and broadly in our imagination. Currently, the repertoire consists mainly of compositions. Each member of the orchestra contributes their own pieces, resulting in a genuine musical profusion in which we must find our way.