A familiar name at Jazz à la Villette, GoGo Penguin is taking to the stage to share the wonder of their new and sumptuous album. In it, the English trio has struck a new balance between electronic and acoustic, with novel textures and sunny melodies.

GoGo Penguin has been charting a unique path across the seas of modern jazz for almost a quarter of a century, cresting the waves of electronic and repetitive music. Following a period of personal and artistic reconstruction resulting in the highly introspective Everything Is Going to Be OK in 2023, the Manchester trio has now rediscovered a certain serenity and a taste for new horizons. And it’s precisely that that permeates Necessary Fictions, their seventh album released in summer 2025, which was patiently crafted in a studio transformed into an experimental laboratory. Through it, Chris Illingworth (piano), Nick Blacka (bass), and Jon Scott (drums) prove themselves to be true to the group’s identity while on their quest for new timbres, upping their use of modular synths and integrating the strings of the Manchester Collective onto two of their tracks. By orchestrating a dialogue between acoustic and electronic, undulating melodies and inventive arrangements, GoGo Penguin is marking a new captivating chapter in an undoubtedly impressive discography.

OPENING ACT: PHOTONS

By turning electronic music into a playground for hybrid jazz, Photons brings trance to the dancefloor.

After training in jazz at the Haute École de Musique in Lausanne and performing as a sideman for Anne Paceo, Théo Ceccaldi, and Léon Phal, pianist and composer Gauthier Toux fell in love with club sounds on the Berlin night scene. Formed in 2022 with drummer Julien Loutelier, guitarist Giani Caserotto, and bassist Samuel F’hima, Photons embodies this passion, finding its own sound between house and techno, acoustic and electronic, while keeping the penchant for groove and improvisation taken from jazz. La Nuit sans l’Ennui, their first album released in autumn 2024, attests to their flexible art, broad sound spectrum, and feel for melody reminiscent of the creative minds behind English label Warp. With their EP PLIER (2025), the group is flirting with the bolder rhythms of an elegant and powerful techno.