Rêve d'éléphant Orchestra

This atypical orchestra of seven musicians has been offering joyful, unusual, generous, sensual, poetic and pleasantly crazy music for over twenty years. Before it became an orchestra, Rêve d'éléphant was a dance show. Therefore, the love of rhythm and movement is in the genes. Since its formation in 2000, the group has released five albums and spawned two versions: one theatrical and literary, Odyssée 14, and the other percussive and electronic, RéPercussion. The special sound of the Rêve d'éléphant Orchestra makes the group unmistakable from the first notes.

Didier Levallet - composer, French double bassist and director of the Jazz en Clunisois festival - knows better than us:

"(...) it is an orchestra that comes from Belgium...A title that I find very appropriate because it is a bit surreal and we know that Belgium is a country that is not only for domestic political reasons, but also has many connections to surrealism for artistic reasons.And this relatively large orchestra with seven musicians produces music that is at the same time very exuberant, very generous, very free, but also very strict in its composition, very colorful and very happy.It is a music that surprises us in the truest sense of the word, very open to many things, many influences, that goes from one to another in a completely natural way; I don't find it artificial at all. Nowadays musicians have the opportunity to come from all kinds of sources to create, and sometimes it's just a pointless adaptation. It's not world music, it's still jazz, because it's the way of making music that counts, regardless of the sources; Also, I don't think there are literal borrowings from outside music, from world music, but it's an open state of mind."

Program and cast

Michel Debrulle: drums, bass drum
Pierre Bernard: flutes
Nicolas Dechêne: guitars
Christian Altehûlshorst: trumpets
Michel Massot: euphonium, sousaphone, trombone, voice
Louis Freres: bass, electronics
Stephan Pougin: bodhran, tupan, congas, darbouka, drums