Imagine Nation – we did it!

OK, we did it. Imagine Nation just played at 60. edition of Jazz Jamboree Festival. I’m happy, that I could share this experience with great artists and wonderful people – Anna Gadt, Liberty Ellman, Ksawery Wójciński, Hubert Zemler – thank you! And we’re happy we could share stage with such a great artists as James Brandon Lewis, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Bad Plus and Idris Acamoor & The Pyramids.

And you know what? We’ll be back!

Imagine Nation!

In October, during the Jazz Jamboree festival, I’ll present my new project. I am so happy – I’ll play at the iconic festival and I will play with great musicians!

Imagine Nation is a completely new thing, with a completely new repertoire. We’ll play my compositions – but this time I allowed myself for a few experiments. I am playing a bit with the jazz idiom. Songs are quite precisely written down, but some parts are open. In a way I try to maintain control and loose it and the same time – these songs can be played in a strictly jazz way, but the performers can also go free. The scores are sometimes precise, but sometimes they become something like a slightly sketched scenario, just setting the order of the events.

To perform this experiment I invited great musicians, outstanding improvisers and wonderful people: Hubert Zemler on drums and objects and Ksawery Wójciński. I will play guitars (real and imagined ones), and at the premiere we will be joined by Liberty Ellman, an excellent guitarist known for solo projects or cooperation with Henry Threadgill.

Marcin Olak Imagine Nation feat. Liberty Ellman – 26.10 @ Jazz Jamboree, Stodola Club, Warsaw.