Blind Date Jazz: Matthew Jacobson + Olesya Zdorovetska

IMC’s Blind Date Jazz - A New Limited Series

Episode 1: Olesya Zdorovetska + Matthew Jacobson
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Musicians often describe improvising with each other as having a conversation - listening, throwing out ideas, responding and developing on each other’s musical thoughts, all in real time.

Since the start of the pandemic we’ve all had less opportunity to listen and hear - feeling either isolated from other people, or besieged by a tsunami of digital content, impossible to focus and listen.

IMC’s new limited series Blind Date Jazz brings listening and creative improvisation into focus, with some of Ireland’s leading improvisers coming into the studio to create an exciting, new, musical conversation.

The twist?

Neither musician has any idea who they are playing with. Unknown, unrehearsed, unplanned and unseen. Not even aware what the other instrument is. In other words, completely blind.

For the first episode, we paired up vocalist & pianist Olesya Zdorovetska with percussionist Matthew Jacobson on their musical blind date.

Matthew is an Irish drummer, improviser, composer, educator and producer. As well as leading his own groups Insufficient Funs and ReDiviDeR, he regularly tours, performs and records with foremost improvisers all around the world. He is also co-director of independent Irish record label Diatribe, a jazz lecturer at Dublin City University. Olesya is a powerful and innovative voice in new music as a soloist, collaborator, and composer crossing the fields of improvised, jazz, Afro-Caribbean, contemporary classical and experimental music. A dynamic figure on the Irish scene, she is noted for her curation of the Phonica series, and her work with Diatribe Records on the critically-acclaimed Haivka recording by Yurodny Ensemble.

So, join us on this journey, as we introduce the two performers, shepherding them into the studio while completely hiding from each other’s sight. A curtain bisects the studio, obscuring the artists from one another.

They begin to play, exchanging musical thoughts, sentences, developing a theme and interacting only through the music, an open mind and completely blind. Our studio curtain drops at a certain point and they come face to face with their new improvising partner. Does the musical conversation change?

Blind Date Jazz is an exploration in listening, intuition, skill and spontaneity, all unique hallmarks of the improvising artist.

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