not so much a band as a project, orfeo 5 is a collective of musicians who use improvisation to find structure, and vice versa, and who specialise in making music from poems and other texts.

we are always on the lookout for hosts for our composing projects (see below and links on the right).

our style blends jazz, blues, improv, loops, sometimes samples, sometimes a bit of minimalism and always a lot of passion, into powerful new songs, using texts from a variety of sources. We're trying to go through and beyond the European jazz tradition, blending folk elements with improvisation and free music, and with rhythms drawn from hip hop and world music.

But in any given performance, none of this may be true, because what we do best is improvise, so that we're always wandering through some kind of hybrid mix of our different approaches and backgrounds, and out again.

orfeo 5 was formed in 2002, and grew out of The Word Hoard's demo/text projects, which began in 1997. These brought writers and musicians together for a month to devise new text-music performances, with the last version of demo/text doing an 8 show national tour in autumn 2001. While demo/text always created excellent material, it also always left the musicians hungry to do more together, so orfeo 5 was formed.

orfeo 5 is available for bookings now. The group offers a performance and workshop package, where people can try out orfeo 5's text-music devising techniques for themselves. Writers and musicians of any level of ability can take part in the workshops, where they will be helped to create texts, and to try out various ways of performing these with the group. Usually, pieces produced in the workshop are performed before orfeo 5's own performance. The Word Hoard also has the capacity to record any workshop performance to 8-track digital and to master CDs from this, so that venue and participants can have a lasting record of anything produced in workshops.

We're especially interested in site-specific and/or issue-based work, and we're keen to investigate large-scale compositions and performances, if given the chance to dig in through residencies and long-term relationships.

photo: Jodi Watson

new project for 2008:
ASCENDING
Beginning in August 2007, Shaun Blezard, Keith Jafrate and new member of the collective, singer Ali Rigg, have been working on a new piece entitled ascending, based on a poem-series of Keith's. After a productive day in August, and two more in February 2008, they have almost finished the compositon of two sets of material, and are now looking for bookings for the piece. They'll also devise a workshop around the material.

Shaun & Keith have also recorded a new CD, when bill danced the war,
with Sarah Murphy.

musicians who have worked with orfeo 5:

Mary Oliver vocals