About

Connecting to the world, to life as a social being, and to nature. This is the impetus behind the music of Ocean Orchestra. This wish for cohesion permeates the compositions, arrangements, as well as the interplay between the participants.

The project consists of musicians from the jazz and world music scene in Copenhagen and was created by composer and guitarist Lars Emil Jørgensen. The initial ideas emerged after travels and music studies in Spain and Brazil, and the actual sketches for the compositions on Ocean Orchestra’s debut album “¡Beleza!” were done on the open ocean and in Olinda (Pernambuco, Brazil). Meanwhile, the compositions were developed further, finalized and recorded in Copenhagen.

Thus, the diagonal cross section from Olinda in the Southern hemisphere to Copenhagen in the Northern draws the line of inspiration across the Atlantic Ocean on which the debut album rests, and which gives the compositions a mix of wildness and melancholy.

Solid pulse awareness runs as an undercurrent of oceanic swells, flamenco and samba in the interplay between the horn section (Mads Egetoft on tenor sax, Fermo Mel on alt sax, Alessandro Garau on trumpet, Jens Erik Raasted on flute), the rhythm section (David Besiakov on drums, Michael Finding on congas, Juan Pino on percussion, Kasper Øllegaard on cajón) and the strings (Andreas Møllerhøj on bass, Rune Fog-Nielsen on bass, Lars Emil Jørgensen on guitar).

The intention of Ocean Orchestra is to create concerts and recordings which awaken feelings of attentiveness, communion and meaningfulness in the audience.