Olivia Murphy Jazz Orchestra

The Olivia Murphy Jazz Orchestra returns to PizzaExpress Jazz Club after their sold out 2025 performance to celebrate their debut studio album release “Fateful Birds and Fledgling Stories”. Conducted by multi-award-winning composer Olivia Murphy, and featuring 18 of the most impressive improvising musicians from the UK jazz scene, this exclusive show will include brand new works, alongside compositions from the album, described as “some of the most exciting large ensemble jazz emerging from the London scene today”.

Olivia Murphy has quickly established herself as an innovative, creative and colourful artist working in large ensemble composition and has developed her own distinct and personal voice. Her music fuses contemporary composition and song-writing with elements of free improvisation, while always keeping story-telling at its core, hailed as “outstanding … fresh, original contemporary music that certainly deserves to be given a much wider audience” (Jazzwise).

Murphy has been funded to record her orchestral works by Help Musicians and PRS Foundation, and is the winner of both the Musicians’ Company Eddie Harvey Award (for jazz arrangement) and the Dankworth Award (for jazz composition). In recent years she has been commissioned by Merton Music Foundation, University of Birmingham and Sonorite Saxophone Quartet and has been published by the ABRSM. Murphy is also Resident Musical Director for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, and has directed her music on collaborations with Cambridge University Jazz Orchestra, Trinity Laban Jazz Ensemble and Birmingham Jazz Orchestra.

With inspiration from Greek Myth to video games, instrumentation including bass flutes and mezzo sopranos, and free improvisation weaved into intricate compositions, Olivia Murphy Jazz Orchestra (OMJO) is heartfelt then silly, orderly then raucous but always astonishingly original. The Orchestra features 18 of the most impressive improvisers in the UK, all sharing a common thread of the Birmingham or London jazz scenes. Murphy’s compositions have been described as “an undoubted triumph” and “fresh contemporary music”, while her distinct conducting style is “like expressive dancing”; she feels that leading her Orchestra is exactly what she was meant to do.

OMJO was formed in early 2022 after being awarded the prestigious Peter Whittingham Development Award, and the Orchestra has since performed sold out dates across the UK, including Birmingham Symphony Hall, The Vortex Jazz Club, and Cheltenham Jazz Festival. The Orchestra’s debut EP "Somewhere, Not So Far Away”, recorded live in Birmingham was described as “brimming with emotion” and “highly accomplished music”. In 2024, the Orchestra recorded their debut studio album “Fateful Birds and Fledgling Stories” with support from the Help Musicians’ Next Level Award which will be released on 8th May 2026.

"“her arrangements bring to mind Gil Evans, elsewhere are reminiscent of Maria Schneider, wistful and moody…clearly a name to watch out for” " - UKJazzNews