After studying as an agricultural engineer, Frédéric Maurin began training in classical composition and jazz at the École des Musiques Actuelles (EDIM) in 2004, obtaining a state diploma in jazz. He then dedicated his time to music. From 2004 to 2018, he founded, directed, and composed the entirety of the repertoire for Ping Machine, a highly decorated ensemble that became a reference point for the new European jazz scene. In 2005, he created Pegazz & L’Hélicon as a support structure for Ping Machine, before transforming it in 2014 into a musical laboratory for various artistic projects in the Paris region.

From 2011 to 2017, Maurin was president of Grand Formats, a federation of jazz and improvisational big bands representing 105 professional orchestras and over 1,500 musicians across France. Since 2013, he has been a guest soloist with numerous symphonic orchestras such as Orchestre National de Lille, Orchestre National du Capitole – Toulouse, and Malmö Symphony Orchestra, on programs dedicated to the music of Frank Zappa. Through the RCM Trio, he has been working on a reinterpretation of Zappa’s work, as well as of 1970s progressive rock. Maurin is co-director of this trio, with Yves Rechsteiner on the pipe organ and Henri-Charles Caget on percussion. A guitar sideman in a wide range of projects, Maurin has worked with the contemporary ensemble Amalgammes, the guitar trio Flamenco Punk, and Cartel Carnage, a band he co-leads with Alex Tomaszewski on electric bass and which liberally blends free jazz and death metal.

In July 2018, the Ministry of Culture named Maurin artistic director of the Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ). In his various orchestral projects, he aims to attract a younger audience through both his programming — including a theatrical reinterpretation of Dracula — and the creation of the ONJ Youth Orchestra, which brings children together from music schools and conservatories. Former directors of the ONJ have been responsible for transmitting the musical wealth produced by the orchestra for over thirty years. Maurin hopes to showcase the diversity of what can be done in modern jazz, a goal that has materialized into an active policy of commissions and collaborations. He has proposed the Ensemble Intercontemporain as a model that the ONJ should follow, as its programming combines the recreation of twentieth-century music and the creation of new music.

Maurin trained at IRCAM in 2015 on MAX software, and again in 2018 on Open Music software. These experiences enabled him to expand the orchestra’s timbral possibilities in more recent compositions. Plurality prevails in Maurin’s compositional influences, as well as in his programming policies as head of the various structures he has directed. From György Ligeti to Steve Coleman, passing through the extreme metal band Meshuggah and Gérard Grisey, Maurin is committed to a highly precise musical style that calls into question the standard musical language and forms employed in jazz and improvised music. At the Radio France Festival Présence in February 2022, he presented his new creation Ex Machina, for orchestra and real-time computer, written with saxophonist Steve Lehman and inspired by spectral composition.