For nearly fifteen years, Onceim (Orchestra of New Creations, Experimentations and Improvised Music ) has stood alongside today’s artists and composers to shape new sonic landscapes and new ways of inhabiting them together. Driven by a deeply collective mode of operation, thirty-five outstanding musicians engage in ever-renewed dialogues and working processes, continually rethinking the relationship to listening and to the score. Both laboratory and toolbox, Onceim is a space of exchange, conversation and exploration, where writing and improvisation constantly respond to one another.

STEPHEN O’MALLEY‘GRUIDÉS’ (2014), 35’
In early 2014 O'Malley was approached by pianist and composer Frédéric Blondy to write a work for ONCEIM orchestra.

Understandably intimidated by the prospect, but encouraged to "just be punk rock about it," the preternaturally gifted composer has conceived a technically demanding -- for the players, at least -- and richly rewarding long-form drone piece intently focused on harmonic experimentation and overtone study. During its 35-minute lifespan, ‘Gruidés’ requires the musicians to sustain pitches for several minutes (which is difficult enough for strings, and a real feat of endurance for woodwind), yielding spectra of eliding dissonance rent in sliding tone clusters and lucent geometries punctuated by a similar whipcrack percussion to that used in sunn o)))'s 2014 collaboration with Scott Walker.

FRANÇOIS J. BONNET‘ORBES’ (2025), 40’
‘Orbes’ is a work conceived as a succession of a finite number of unbreakable elements called “orbs”. Each orb can be approached as a composite forming a sequence or part of the work, but also being “for itself”, autonomously, a “moment” or trajectory. The piece takes the form of a continuous unfolding in the interpolar space of the orbs, moving gradually from one to the next. The order of passage of the orbs is not fixed. Nor is it predetermined by the composer. The choice is left to the conductor, who determines the sequence of orbs for each performance. Each time the piece is played according to a particular sequence, this sequence is recorded and can never be used again. To date, the project for the piece envisages the construction of 7 different orbs, opening up 5040 possible combinations.‘Orbes’ is inspired by Milton's ‘Paradis Perdu’. In this epic poem, Satan rises from Hell and primordial chaos to wreak his vengeance and corrupt nascent humanity. On his journey, he travels through an almost abstract universe, a diurnal space made up of orbs (planets) around which he gravitates. It's this contrast between a barely-drawn celestial vault, a universe in outline, and a transformative will (that of the avenging demon) that serves as the primum movens of the play.