2007-01-09 12:53:25

7/02/2007 wed. 9pm Opening night of The National Review of Live Art at The TRAMWAY Glasgow 0141 357 5538
Jan Kopinski will open the National Review of Live Art, with his detailed and movingly intense MIRRORS
MIRRORS is Jan Kopinski's newest music to film work MIRRORS, with his closely knit group REFLEKTOR, specialising in music to visuals with a distinct central/eastern European feel.
MIRRORS is Jan Kopinski's latest commissioned work combining music and visual imagery in an exciting performance with his new collective outfit, REFLEKTOR.
Jan has been commissioned by Opera North Projects to develop MIRRORS, with the shimmering voice of Melanie Pappenheim (heard with DV8,on Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut, Gangs of New York and vocal group The Shout), Steve Iliffe's glowering piano and Kopinski's characteristic volatile saxophone. REFLEKTOR are intensely intuitive and personal - his daughter Janina's viola playing has depth and experience, (from Boulez to pop multi media sensation Gorrilaz}. His son, Stefan, is a long time member of Pinski Zoo and recorded on 2 of his last cd's. Patrick Illingworth is an exciting drummer working not only in the jazz scene but also with varied bands (808 state, Cinematic Orchestra)

His composing style is shaped by visual elements, using jazz and improvisation to create a highly personal reflection upon a world of dislocation, memory and transition. The music also explores impressions of folk, religious and contemporary music that so beguiled modern Polish composers such as Szymanowski.
The halting images of Poland that Kopinski has collected over many years reveal landscapes and frozen edifices of a disturbing past, and cultural collisions that have shaped the land and its history. For MIRRORS he has collaborated with video artist Jim Boxall who works with REFLEKTOR to manipulate and weave an intriguing and original experience - MIRRORS. The mixture of scored and improvised music set to video projections is a performance of eloquence and intensity.

'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