Saagara
Born in 1983, wind player Wacław Zimpel emerged on the Polish jazz scene in the mid-2000s and by the 2010s had become one of its busiest artists, playing in a wide range of formations and across a broad spectrum of genres, from avant-garde and free jazz to post-minimalism and electronic music projects. Alongside the post-minimalist, avant-jazz LAM, and the experimental big band The Resonance Ensemble - and of course his own eponymous collaborations with electronic musician Shackleton, for example - Saagara is his best-known international band, exploring the boundaries of genre with four Indian musicians.
In their first concert in Hungary, they will present their third album, which will be released in October.
Schedule
After his success in Poland, Wacław Zimpel made a major international breakthrough in 2016 with his minimalist-meditative solo album Lines, released in February that year, and his only album for his LAM project, out in October. But before that, he was on his way to India to revive another formation. Inspired by Terry Riley and La Monte Young, he travelled to India in 2012 to explore the roots of minimalist music. He was so influenced by the local masters of Carnatic music in Bengaluru, South India, that he formed Saagara with the musicians he met there, releasing their first album in 2015. Zimpel, an acclaimed jazz musician, practiced the style with great dedication for a year to connect on a deeper level with his fellow musicians Ghiridhar Udupa, Aggu Baba, K Raya, and Mysore N Karthik. After the concerts of the album, which fused Carnatic traditions and chamber jazz, Zimpel shaped the concept a bit and brought in his Berlin-based electronic music producer collaborator mooryc for the second album (2 is the title) in 2017, which brought in this electronic music alongside the jazzy approach to the Indian-Western musical fusion. Zimpel has since then only become more immersed in this world after his collaborations with Shackleton on his albums with James Holden. The third Saagara album, many years in the making, will bear the imprint of this. Released in October 2024, during the first Saagara concert in Hungary, 3 will be released by Glitterbeat, a global music scene dominator, and will be characterised by an even more transcendent fusion of Western electronica and ancient musical traditions, free of clichés.
House of Music Hungary
A music education centre and concert venue in the heart of the City Park, behind the airy futuristic glass facade of Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.
