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Announcing new limited series: Blind Date Jazz

IMC’s Blind Date Jazz - A New Limited Series

New episodes Blind Date Jazz will be airing Sundays at 8pm from 18th April. Further details here.

Watch the first four episodes of Blind Date Jazz below.
Streaming on Youtube or Facebook, subscribe to be notified.

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.

So, join us on this journey, as we introduce two mystery 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.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to discover each Monday morning which two we have set up on this week’s blind date, and tune in each Sunday evening to listen in to their musical conversation.

“Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It’s conversation.”

- Wynton Marsalis

‘Blind Date Jazz’ is one of IMC’s new online initiatives to support and sustain the Irish artist community. Additionally, we are currently promoting online music lessons, promoting album releases, and online concerts and featuring useful professional development material through our Jazz Connector sessions and our Resource articles.

Connect with IMC on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Share music and support artists.

Watch Blind Date Jazz

Episode 1: Olesya Zdorovetska + Matthew Jacobson - premiered Sunday 14th February

Episode 2: Lina Andonovska + Izumi Kimura - premiered Sunday 21st February

Episode 3: Mike Nielsen + Cathal Roche - premiere Sunday 28th February

Episode 4: Hugh Buckley + Derek Whyte - premiere Sunday 7th March


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