MIRRORS
JAN KOPINSKI's REFLEKTOR

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MIRRORS is Jan's latest commissioned project combining music and visual imagery in an exciting performance with his new collective outfit, REFLEKTOR, specialising in works linked to projected visuals.
MIRRORS sees Jan's new compositions shaped by visual elements, using jazz and improvisation to create a highly personal reflection upon a world of dislocation, memory and transition.
Commissioned by Opera North to work with voice, the music also explores impressions of folk, religious and contemporary music that so beguiled modern Polish composers such as Szymanowski. For MIRRORS he has collaborated with video artist Jim Boxall who works with REFLEKTOR to manipulate and weave an intriguing and original experience

A new CD of Jan's music from Mirrors is being recorded March 2009 for the Jazz Services label in 2010

Semi improvised scores and video projections mixed live - 6 musicians and 1 video artist in an exciting, widely dynamic programme of approx 110 mins

JAN KOPINSKI saxophones
STEVE ILIFFE piano
MELANIE PAPPENHEIM voice
JANINA KOPINSKA viola
STEFAN KOPINSKI bass
PATRICK ILLINGWORTH drums
JIM BOXALL projection

Jan performs solo tenor sax using electro-acoustic techniques to the The Great Bear ,
filmed in Poland and mixed by JOY OF BOX(aka Jim Boxall)

Prompted by ideas of identity and loss, MIRRORS is Jan's musical reflections upon themes of displacement, belonging and diffused memory. The images are collected from his visits to Poland over 20 years and the music is developed from stories, folk music, jazz and 20th century Polish composers. As Poland rolls sideways into the global culture, there are moments when historical and cultural perceptions becomes blurred from reality into dream.
Whilst MIRRORS is determinately based on Polish impressions, it's not a travelogue and transcends the particular to explore those moments of hovering reality, in and out of sleep, when emotions, fears, nostalgia and sentiment speak very clearly..

'Kopinski has a sensitivity to visuals as reflected in other scores he's performed for silent movies. … using his own family in the band Kopinski evokes the intimate, inexplicable binds/bonds of family life …..he evokes Slav folk music, melancholic and lost to an irrecoverable past, but Iliffe's broken chords also reflect the equally lost world of discordant modernism'…….Jazzwise

STEVE ILIFFE MELANIE PAPPENHEIM JAN KOPINSKI

 

 

Listen to Jan talk about MIRRORS.

New Territories 2007 Podcast

You can hear an interview with Jan Kopinski from this podcast forThe National Review of LiveArt 2007.
Jan talks to LeonMcDermott about how MIRRORS came about and some of the ideas behind the project

 

For some concerts we are joined by Aniko Toth,
a singer of Hungarian origins steeped in a background of
European folk and Art song, to perform the vocal parts for MIRRORS