english version / wersja polska

Anna Maria Jopek and Nigel Kennedy
- Polish Jazz Focus

Wednesday, 2nd June, 7.30pm

The Sage Gateshead

A sensational evening of accessible jazz, starring one of the world’s most celebrated violinists Nigel Kennedy, now resident in Poland and a leading Polish jazz singer, Anna Maria Jopek.

Anna Maria Jopek, a graduate from Chopin’s Academy of Music and Manhattan School of Music’s Jazz Department, has worked with artists of the calibre of Pat Metheny and Branford Marsalis. She also represented Poland in the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest.

Concert supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of POLSKA! YEAR: www.polskayear.pl.

Tickets can be booked either by calling 0191 443 4661, online at www.thesagegateshead.org or in person from The Sage Gateshead’s Ticket Office.

Time: Wednesday, 2nd June, 7.30pm
Venue: Hall One, The Sage Gateshead, Gateshead Quays, Gateshead, NE8 2JR
Tickets: £10.75 – £21.50

Jan Kopinski’s Mirrors – Polish Jazz Focus

Saturday, 5th June, 8pm

The Sage Gateshead

An amazing audio-visual performance by Jan Kopinski, UK-based saxophonist of Polish ancestry.

Prompted by ideas of identity and loss, Mirrors is a musical reflection upon themes of displacement, belonging and diffused memory. Music and imagery (projected onto the performers) combine in an exploration of those moments between sleep and the real, when emotion, fear, nostalgia and sentiment speak together.

The images are collected from Jan’s visits to Poland over 20 years and the music is developed from stories, folk music, jazz and 20th century Polish composers.

Jan Kopinski’s father is from that wave of émigrés/escapees from Poland in the Second World War, becoming a bomber pilot, and, following the conflict – estranged from his native country by a ruling ideology that crudely imposed rules of loyalty, nationality and punishment – he never returned.

www.jankopinski.com
www.myspace.com/jankopinski

Tickets can be booked either by calling 0191 443 4661, online at www.thesagegateshead.org or in person from The Sage Gateshead’s Ticket Office.

Time: Saturday, 5th June, 8pm
Venue: Hall Two, The Sage Gateshead, Gateshead Quays, Gateshead, NE8 2JR
Tickets: £6.75 – £13.50

Marcin Wasilewski Trio – Polish Jazz Focus

Wednesday, 9th June, 8pm

The Sage Gateshead

Marcin Wasilewski (piano), Slawomir Kurkiewicz (bass), and Michal Miskiewicz (drums) started playing together as teenagers as the Simple Acoustic Trio and are now known simply as the Marcin Wasilewski Trio. When still teenagers they came to the attention of their compatriot, the great Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko with whom they have played live and recorded as the Tomasz Stanko Quartet. As their own unit, they bring an almost telepathic group dynamic and irresistible rhythmic momentum to the classic jazz piano trio.

Part of the group’s secret is the patient ease with which they intertwine impressionistic music and powerful pulses.... it may not appear to be trying to hit you between the eyes, but in the long run it does that anyway. John Fordham, The Guardian.

Trio jazz of an exquisite sort. Jazz Review

Tickets can be booked either by calling 0191 443 4661, online at www.thesagegateshead.org or in person from The Sage Gateshead’s Ticket Office.

Time: Wednesday, 9th June, 8pm
Venue: Hall Two, The Sage Gateshead, Gateshead Quays, Gateshead, NE8 2JR
Tickets: £6.75 – £13.50