NYJO Blueprint Orchestra
NYJO Blueprint Orchestra is a forward-looking big band programme for Emerging Professional musicians. The orchestra offers a weekly, curated large-ensemble environment for players who want to deepen their craft, develop professional confidence, and engage seriously with contemporary big band music.
It is a reimagining of the big band model. Rooted in consistent rehearsal and collective music-making, it creates space for artistic risk, creativity, and growth while honouring the legacy and knowledge that underpins large-ensemble jazz. The programme looks ahead, forging new artistic contexts that reflect today’s jazz landscape and the diverse voices shaping it.
The orchestra is led by Musical Director Olivia Murphy, who oversees the artistic direction and development of the ensemble. Meeting weekly across four ten-week terms, the orchestra focuses on building trust, musical cohesion, and the advanced technical and creative skills required to perform at the highest professional standard. Regular rehearsal fosters responsibility, confidence, and a strong sense of community between musicians and Musical Director.
NYJO Blueprint Orchestra sits firmly within the NYJO pathway, forming a continuation of each musician’s development from earlier NYJO programmes into the professional world. Participation is intentionally time-limited: musicians hold their chair for one year before reapplying or progressing onward, ensuring the orchestra remains dynamic, developmental, and future-focused. It is not an end point, but part of an ongoing training journey.
Repertoire and Artistic Focus
The repertoire offers a deep dive into both legacy and contemporary large-ensemble music. Programmes explore complete albums and suites by composers such as Duke Ellington, Gil Evans, Maria Schneider, Bob Brookmeyer, Toshiko Akiyoshi and others, encouraging detailed engagement with historical content, musical language, sectional playing, and improvisation. Alongside this, new music plays a central role. Over the year, Olivia Murphy will compose a major new work written specifically for the orchestra and its individual players, culminating in a landmark performance in 2027.
In Blueprint’s inauguaral term, the band will be rehearsing the music of Toshiko Akiyoshi – particularly compositions from the album March of The Tadpoles, the fifth studio recording of the Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band. The Big Band was active from the 1970s in Los Angeles before moving to New York, continuing to be active until the early 2000s.
While Akiyoshi is sometimes lesser talked about in jazz history, she is an incredibly talented and successful pianist, composer and arranger, receiving fourteen Grammy nominations, and was the first woman to win both Best Arranger and Best Composer Awards in Downbeat Magazine’s Readers’ poll.
Alongside this, the band will also look at the Far East Suite, the renowned and brilliant masterpiece by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. The music was primarily inspired by the Ellington Orchestra’s tours across Asia in 1963 and 1964, including performances in India, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Japan. The music is a reflective, evocative, and powerful musical tour through the “East” which demonstrates Ellington and Strayhorn’s astonishing and historic legacy, and allows space to feature the amazing improvisers within the ensemble.
Meet the Orchestra
Musical Director
Composer, conductor, and improviser Olivia Murphy is an innovative and colourful artist, with her music hailed as ‘some of the most exciting large ensemble jazz emerging from the London scene today’ (UK Jazz News). Her main focus is large ensemble composition, and she has performed with her jazz orchestra across the UK including Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Birmingham Symphony Hall and Pizza Express Jazz Club. Murphy has been funded by Help Musicians and the PRS Foundation, and awarded the Musicians’ Company Eddie Harvey Award for arrangement and the Dankworth Award for jazz composition. She has been commissioned to write for and work with various ensembles and institutions such as Cambridge University, University of Birmingham, Sonorite Saxophone Quartet and her works have been published by the ABRSM. Her most recent orchestral album Fateful Birds And Fledgling Stories was awarded 4.5 stars in Downbeat Magazine, described as ‘nothing short of a revelation’ and featured on BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio 3.
‘Blueprint will be a band which strives for excellence and beauty; refining and performing a variety of the brilliant jazz orchestra works from over the last 75 years. A positive and inspiring learning environment, Blueprint will allow emerging professional musicians to reach their full potential.‘
Support NYJO Blueprint Orchestra
Become an early supporter! Blueprint Syndicate offers a rare and highly rewarding opportunity to help our ambitious new orchestra flourish from its earliest years.
We are seeking committed supporters who can help underwrite the orchestra’s first three years, giving it the stability to build artistic confidence, attract outstanding collaborators, and prove itself as a defining force in UK jazz.
