For the last decade, Fred Pallem and his Sacre du Tympan virtuoso circus show have been playing around with our ears and sticking their tongues out at us. The orchestra, which trained at the Conservatoire de Paris, vacillates between skilful tunes and popular art, somewhere between rock and jazz. They flip from drama to comedy and toy with Z movies, cartoons, comics and spaghetti westerns with brio, humour and brilliance. And it works: they manage to bang a square peg into a round hole, marrying kitsch and virtuosity, bringing together the serious side of vanity and the intelligence of buffoonery.

Under a sky of stars – Nino Rota, Charles Ives, Ennio Morricone and André Popp – a line-up of unequalled solo artists explore off-beat territory to seek out the perfect, unexpected note. Disguised under a “jazz” label, dragging round a seven-headed Hydra, the group, which takes its name form Stravinski’s ballet, Rite of Spring, has come to symbolise the art of vivacious innovation in France, which has helped it hold its own among its counterparts. “I started off with nothing, all alone in my room with a few stamps and envelopes,” notes Fred Pallem. “I’d say the past decade has turned out really well.”

After their first eponymous disk in 2002, followed by Le retour three years later, Sacre du Tympan come back into the limelight with La Grande Ouverture, produced by Bertrand Fresel (Kent). This is cannibal art, digesting genres like rock and pop and giving them new colours. In his dream of driving something big, Fred – along with his accomplices – has opened up the score to a whole range of styles. Above all, this album is a "collection" of titles already played in concert with artists as diverse as Sanseverino, Piers Faccini, André Minvielle, Sébastien Tellier, M, Marcel Kanche and Julien Lourau.

“Just like actors on stage, the orchestra needs to adapt to the style of the guest, who needs to get closer to our tone,” explains Fred. Because the album is made up of guest songs and cover versions, the group takes more of a back seat and Fred has moved away from his role of composer. “We have made ourselves the servants of emotion and put our egos in the closet”. The result is the eclectic Grande Ouverture, in which the recognisable shapes of each singer’s voice stand out: the explosion of M and Seb Tellier, the contemplation and introspection of Marcel Kanche, and the delicate sweetness of Juliette Paquiereau (Diving with Andy). “Each track on the album evokes a different mood. I recommend listening to one title per day.” But the disparities find coherence in Sacre’s clear signature: a passion for the right note, pulled out from some corner to bring about “emotion, joy, sadness and sexual desire’, and the efficiency of the bass lines and the sound. Above all, as Fred Pallem points out, there are two ways of listening to the album: one is easy to enjoy ”in your car or on your bike, singing along”, and the other more arduous, “where you need to sit down, like you do when you read a book; a level of concentration that gets you tripping out and lets you cut yourself off from the world and escape, bringing you happiness”.

This is probably the key to Sacre’s success and the reason they are still around: because it’s what people want, and because they’ve broken down genres. “In France today, jazz is having a hard time”, observes Fred. “In New York it’s still everywhere and popular. Here, it is hiding in the shadows of institutions. Of course they bring some kind of comfort and there are lots of good things about them, like subsidies. But jazz is losing its rock ‘n’ roll. It’s becoming old-mannish. And there’s an aristocratic side to French jazz, which often plays for itself without worrying about the audience. But in fact that’s where the challenge and balance lie: knowing how to respond to audience expectations and surprise them at the same time. No one has to listen to a musician. He could just play at home. But when he makes a record or gets up on stage, then he has to watch what he’s saying.”

Even so, after three albums (“Not enough, but that’s down to the hard laws of the music industry!”) Fred Pallem admits he is weary of “dragging ten people round”, and reckons he has reached the end of the Sacre adventure, at least in its present form. This should therefore be the last tour. The leader has this to say, with a smile on his face: “If you like Sacre du Tympan, then it’s time you made the most of them, because it’s your last chance!”