Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman will celebrate his 65th birthday by presenting a version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon with one of Switzerland's leading orchestras

Jaz Coleman with a conductor's baton, and the prism artwork from the cover of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon
(Image credit: Jaz Coleman/Pink Floyd)

Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman is a man with many strings to his bow – singer, author, documentarian, composer, conductor, arranger – and his latest adventure finds him working with a Swiss orchestra on his arrangement of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon.

It's familiar territory for Coleman, who released Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd in 1995 and Kashmir: Symphonic Led Zeppelin two years later, both recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1999 he worked with the Prague Symphony Orchestra on the album Riders on the Storm: The Doors Concerto.

"I am incredibly excited about the performance of Dark Side Of The Moon on the 26th February 2025 by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande," says Coleman. "As many people know, Geneva is a Killing Joke city (we wrote Eighties and much of Night Time there).

"When I scored Pink Floyd's Us And Them back in 1994, it was 70% Dark Side and 30% The Wall. For this special occasion, I will present the entire Dark Side Of The Moon. I am grateful to the OSR and Antigel Festival for arranging this concert on the day Killing Joke started which just happens to be my 65th birthday!"

It won't be Coleman's first time working with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, which was formed in 1918 and is based at the Victoria Hall in Geneva, Switzerland. A year ago he collaborated on an evening of Led Zeppelin orchestrations at the Antigel Festival.

Tickets for the performance are on sale now.

Jaz Coleman concert poster

(Image credit: Jaz Coleman)
Fraser Lewry
Online Editor, Classic Rock

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 38 years in music industry, online for 25. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.