Noé Codjia, Zoot Big Band, Zoot Collectif - Bagages en Zoot (2026) [Hi-Res]

Bagages en Zoot is the debut studio album of the Zoot Big Band, led by trumpeter and Zoot Collectif co-founder Noé Codjia. The record crowns several years of the collective's work in the large-ensemble format: founded in 2024, the Zoot Big Band brought together sixteen musicians from the Zoot Collectif roster to revive the spirit of the swing and bebop era through an almost exclusively original repertoire.
The Zoot Collectif has, over the past decade, become one of the most vital forces on the Parisian jazz scene — functioning simultaneously as a creative collective, an independent label, and a community hub, hosting weekly jam sessions whose reputation has spread well beyond France. The album's title — roughly translatable as "Luggage in Zoot" — evokes the idea of accumulated musical journeys and collective identity, carried into a new orchestral context.
True to the Collectif's founding credo, Codjia and his colleagues draw on the hard-bop tradition — the lineage of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, and Sonny Clark — while channeling it through the energy and compositional ambition of their own generation. In the big band setting, this tradition finds new room to breathe: dense section writing, long-form solos, and dynamic contrasts combine to produce a record that is both a homage and a genuinely contemporary statement. Bagages en Zoot is released on the independent label Light Blue, marking a significant new chapter in the Zoot Big Band's artistic development.

Tracklist:
1-1 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - Bagages en Zoot [5:28]
1-2 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - Nuit Calme [6:06]
1-3 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - The Eraser [4:40]
1-4 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - A Golden Egg on a Black Key [4:56]
1-5 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - El Chupito de la Noche [7:54]
1-6 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - Zoot Express [6:27]
1-7 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - Yénou-Zoun [7:28]
1-8 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - Le Fou à Pattes Bleues [7:21]
1-9 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - Out of the Cellar [6:25]
1-10 Noé Codjia;Zoot Big Band;Zoot Collectif - Tote Bug [5:22]