Le Gros Groupe modern jazz big band

Created by the Centre d'Expérimentation Musicale in 2009, Le Gros Groupe is an unclassifiable modern jazz big band. It is made up of twelve musicians representing the elite of Saguenean jazzmen: four saxophonists (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone), a trumpeter, a cornetist, two trombonists, a drummer, a keyboard player, a double bass player and a guitarist/sampling and live processing.

Through daring musical arrangements and around thirty commissions for original pieces placed with seven composers in recent years, the music of LE Gros Groupe is both unusual and crazy, complex and simple, beautiful and surprising. By a happy mix of inspirations from jazz, contemporary music, progressive rock, funk, classical or even Hawaiian music, in addition to the expanded palette of colours brought by sampling and processing live, Le Gros  Groupe and its repertoire go far beyond the framework provided by the big band tradition by freely moving towards its own musical horizons.