We extend the lowest-order matching of tree-level matrix elements with parton showers to give a complete description at the next higher perturbative accuracy in α s at both small and large jet resolutions, which has not been achieved so far. This requires the combination of the higher-order resummation of large Sudakov logarithms at small values of the jet resolution variable with the full next-to-leading-order (NLO) matrix-element corrections at large values. As a by-product, this combination naturally leads to a smooth connection of the NLO calculations for different jet multiplicities. In this paper, we focus on the general construction of our method and discuss its application to e + e − and pp collisions. We present first results of the implementation in the Geneva Monte Carlo framework. We employ N-jettiness as the jet resolution variable, combining its next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic resummation with fully exclusive NLO matrix elements, and Pythia 8 as the backend for further parton showering and hadronization. For hadronic collisions, we take Drell-Yan production as an example to apply our construction. For e + e − → jets, taking α s (m Z) = 0.1135 from fits to LEP thrust data, together with the Pythia 8 hadronization model, we obtain good agreement with LEP data for a variety of 2-jet observables
