Large contemporary jazz ensembles have become few and far between. One of the consequences of the past decade’s wage squeeze has been the loss of a culture that has shaped the history of one of the 20th century’s greatest musical inventions: From Duke Ellington to Carla Bley, from the Sun Ra Arkestra to the Vienna Art Orchestra, large formations have always been part of the canon of improvised music. With a view of counteracting this regrettable trend, Christian Muthspiel founded his 17-piece jazz orchestra in 2019, gathering around him musicians from Austria’s astonishingly populous young creative scene. With a double rhythm section (two basses, two drums), a piano, a six-piece woodwind section plus three trumpets and three trombones, this ensemble’s intention is to create a sound that is based on complex scores and is informed by the virtues of classical orchestral playing. The emergence of each musician from the collective as an individual with an improvised solo is a consistent, central principle of all of Christian Muthspiel’s compositional work for his Orjazztra Vienna.