In 2008 the Maciej Obara Trio released I can do it, to enthusiastic reviews and while at the Brooklyn Academy of Music the following year, he formed MaMuGe 3 and recorded Three with Harvey Sorgen (drums) and John Lindberg (vocals). At that time, he also invited US musicians Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Mark Helias (bass), and Nasheet Waits (drums) to join him and form the Obara Special Quartet. Their collaboration resulted in an album Four, recorded at Systems Two Studio in New York.
Obara had previously cooperated with, among others, Tomasz Stańko (as New Balladyna Quartet and Special Project), musicians from the New York School of Improvisational Music – Ralph Alessi, Mark Helias, Nasheet Waits (album Four and joint concert tour in Poland), John Lindberg and Harvey Sorgen (album MaMuGe 3), as well as with Maciej Grabowski, Krzysztof Gradziuk (I Can Do It, Message from Ohayo), and Piotr Damasiewicz (Power of the Horns). At the beginning of 2017, Manfred Eicher, the founder of the ECM record company, offered Maciej Obara a recording session. His album Unloved, recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, was released in November 2017 by ECM. Its premiere took place in the NFM hall in Wrocław at the Jazztopad Festival.
In 2011 Maciej Obara was nominated for the Fryderyk Jazz Musician of the Year Award and won a scholarship from the Młoda Polska Programme. In 2012 he was chosen to participate in the 12 Points Festival in Portugal with his Polish Quartet and in a showcase in Budapest. In 2018, he won two Fryderyk Awards – for the Artist of 2017 and the Best Album of 2017 (for Unloved). The same year he was awarded the Coryphaeus of Polish Music Award in the Personality of the Year category. In 2019, Obara received the first prize in the BMW Jazz Welt Award in Munich as the best saxophonist of the 2019 edition.
He was also selected, alongside countryman Maciej Garbowski, to participate in Take Five: Europe, a professional development scheme produced by Serious in the UK, who also produce the London Jazz Festival.
Take Five: Europe brought together some of the most talented emerging jazz musicians from France, Holland, Norway, Poland and the UK and included a week long residential dedicated to musical entrepreneurship and the music business in Europe as well as establishing contacts with other artists and promoters. The programme also included musical development, under the tutelage of baritone saxophonist and composer John Surman, and the formation of a 10-piece ensemble which performed concerts in France (Jazz sous les Pommiers, Countances), the Netherlands (North Sea Jazz Festival), Norway (Molde International Jazz Festival), the UK (London Jazz Festival) and Poland (Jazztopad).
During this period Obara established another project with Dominik Wania, which includes the two Norwegian musicians he encountered at Take Five: Europe, Ole Morten Vagan (bass), Gard Nilssen (drums) and their two recordings Komeda and Live at Manggha has been released in November 2012 and 2013 with For Tune Records from Warsaw.
In the spring of 2019, the Maciej Obara International Quartet toured France. The tour’s culmination was a recording session at the La Buissoine studio for ECM Records. Obara was also invited to cooperate with leading Scandinavian musicians from the Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra. Their first joint concert took place at the Molde Jazz Festival in Norway. The same year, Obara was commissioned to compose a saxophone concert with piano by the AUKSO orchestra. The artist invited Nikola Kołodziejczyk and Dominik Wania (piano) to orchestrate his composition.