SLAMCD 255 ‘EARTH’ Jan Kopinski

1) Tower 7.29
2) Colt 4.01
3) Tractor Go 8.42
4) Dream Road 4.31
5) Return And Turn 6.08
6) Field Line 3.23
7) Holy Man 3.03
8) Falling Bells 5.04
9) Glass Eyes 3.06
10) Song For A New Life 6.17
11) Land Sleep 4.04
12) Song For Oleksandr 4.39
13) Black Earth 5.59

Jan Kopinski - tenor, alto %26amp; soprano saxophones

Steve Iliffe - grand piano.

Janina Kopinska - viola

Stefan Kopinski - bass

All compositions by Jan Kopinski except track 12 (Kopinski %26amp; Iliffe)

Recorded at Lakeside Theatre, Nottingham, England, 9^th, 10^th and 18^th September 2002,

Recorded, mixed %26amp; produced by Jan Kopinski

Coda March 2005

Jan Kopinski
Earth
Slam CD255
There's long been interest among improvisers in working with silent films, whether classic or contemporary. It's a special experience having form determined by visual narrative, whether the music is closely attentive or otherwise. There's now a small but significant body of recordings by composer/improvisers, including Bill Frisell (various Keaton Projects), Mark Dresser (Cabinet of Doctor Caligari); Schiano/ Kowald/ Léandre (Battleship Potemkin); Luis Sclavis (Dans La Nuit); Sakis Papadimitriou (Nosferatu); and Gary Lucas (The Golem). The present CD is music composed by saxophonist Kopinski for live performance with Earth (Zemlya), made by Ukrainian director Aleksandr Douzhenko in 1930. It's music of great pathos and beauty, clearly fuelled by both the film's grandeur and by the painful historical ironies of its propaganda component. Kopinski is joined here by and his children, violist Janina Kopinska and bassist Stefan Kopinski, and pianist Steve Iliffe. From the outset there's a lovely convergence of materials and approaches, the Eastern European-flavored opening theme gradually giving way to Kopinski's Trane-like flutters. At times it almost feels like litany on an unknown text, as on "dream road-dream of love and utopia," which mixes contrasting modes in a particularly arresting way, and the beautiful "falling bells-religion rejected" with Iliffe's bell-like piano. Kopinski often seems very close to Coltrane's elegiac period, circa 1965--A Love Supreme, Crescent (the concluding "Black Earth" suggests "Wise One")-and it's a mobile profundity, meshing beautifully with his themes and the chamber music aspects of the instrumentation. Even without the film, this is music that swims in history, somber and richly allusive. It's a worthy addition to the genre.
Stuart Broomer

Jazzwise, March 2005-03-0 CD Review

Pinski Zoo goes to the movies….Earth is an extraordinary, visionary film created in 1930 about the Stalinist collectivisation of Ukrainian farms. It toes the party line while transcending it with a take on family life deeply rooted in the soil. So not a bundle of laughs, but rare and special, not unlike Kopinski’s soundtrack. As a fine artist himself, Kopinski has a sensitivity to visuals as reflected in other scores he’s performed for silent movies. And by using his own family in the band Kopinsky evokes the intimate, inexplicable binds/bonds of family life that are integral to Dovzhenko’s silent film. There are various paradoxes within Kopinski’s music; he evokes Slav folk music, melancholic and lost to an irrecoverable past, but Iliff’s broken chords also reflect the equally lost world of discordant modernism that this brave new era of revolutionary cinema was going to usher in. There are moments of lyricism but essentially there is a hushed chamber music feel throughout, with Kopinski close-miked and intense; even moments of release, like the joyous funeral, are underlined with a sense of tears that pervades the whole composition.

Andy Robson

Hi-FiNews September 2004

JAN KOPINSKI

Earth: Music To Dovzhenko's Film Zemlya

Slam 255

66m 56s

For tenor saxophonists, the legacy of John Coltrane is an unwieldy albatross. Those that make the best of his legacy are players on other instruments, like guitarist Sonny Sharrock or singer Phil Minton. Those who pick up on the modal bliss-outs of late Trane (Pharoah Sanders, Zusaan Kali Fasteau) betray both their own individuality and the real meaning of his universalising musical language. Kopinski is different. With his band Pinski Zoo he developed an unlikely cross between harmolodic funk and Polish folk to mesh with his Traneish sax.

Here his quartet - son and daughter Stefan and Janina on electric bass and viola, the Zoo's Steve Iliffe on grand piano - lacks the pounding groove of yore, but manages to maintain the wonderful sense of slowly-unrolling time which is Kopinski's forte: appropriate indeed for accompanying old film stock.

Kopinski looks at life through the squint of eternity - music nostalgically recalled rather than actively pursued - but his funereal solemnity is leavened with black humour and sarcasm in true East European style (on the foldout, his profile is positioned so it resembles one of Dovzhenko's mighty bulls). The band has an internal rhythmic coherence and bovine dignity which is truly rare. BW

PERFORMANCE MEASURED, SOMBRE

RECORDING WARM, RESONANT

CADENCE, August 2004

EARTH is something completely different, a soundtrack written by saxophonist Jan Kopinski for the old silent Soviet film classic, Earth. I wasn’t able to find a copy of the film to check how the music matched the visuals but even without the film you can hear the narrative progression in this music (Tower/ Colt/ Tractor Go/ Dream Road/ Return And Turn/ Field Line/ Holy Man/ Falling Bells/ Glass Eyes/ Song For A New Life/ Land Sleep/ Song For Oleksandr/ Black Earth. 66:26.), going through phases of sadness, mourning, determination, and hope. The score is performed by a chamber group (Kopinski, ts, as, ss; Steve Iliffe, p; Janina Kopinska, vla; Stefan Kopinski, b. 9/9-10/02, 9/18/02,

Nottingham, England.) with Kopinski’s saxophone first emulating the spirituality of John Coltrane then moving on to the simple folk-based beauty of Albert Ayler. His soulful cries are underpinned by Steve Iliffe’s weighty piano and the viola and bass strengthen the body of the work. It would be interesting to see how this music enhances the film, but even without that it is impressive work.

Jerome Wilson,

Jazz at Ronnie Scott’s, number 149

Although saxophonist Jan Kopinski is still perhaps best remembered as the leader of the seminal late-1980s loud-jazz band Pinski Zoo, he is featured here as a composer of film music (for Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s silent classic Zemla). The visual poetry and moving emotional content of the film’s potrayal of a Ukrainian community living through what was the Soviet collectivisation project, is perfectly conveyed by Kopinski’s multi-textured saxophone sound, which runs the emotional gamut from rhapsodic, almost Lloyd-like, warbling to gutsy passion. Steve Iliffe’s eloquent, lyrical piano, and occasional contributions from Janina Kopinski’s viola and Stefan Kopinski’s bass complement the leader’s brooding skirling beautifully, and the whole album, even without the film it illustrates, is a deeply moving and intensely personal statement from one of the UK’s most instantly identifiable saxophonists.

Chris Parker

MusicBoom, May 2005

Jazz %26amp; Pellicole
di
Vittorio Lo Conte

Nel 1930 il regista ucraino Aleksandr Dovzhenko girò uno del classici del cinema muto, Zemlya, in cui mostrava la vita in un villaggio di contadini della sua patria nel periodo delle collettivazioni forzate. Al di là della propaganda politica cui doveva servire il film ci sono dei momenti di poesia che lo elevano ad opera d´arte - a dispetto delle intenzioni dei politici dell´epoca, cui interessava solo la diffusione delle proprie idee con ogni mezzo possibile - fatta con la tecnica disponibile in quel determinato momento storico.

Jan Kopinski, sassofonista polacco residente in Inghilterra, si serve di questo film come sfondo per un´ipotetica colonna sonora fatta con le note del jazz ed adatta a sottolineare il pathos presente nel film. Con il suo sax di matrice coltraniana fa una musica lenta e suggestiva che anche senza un supporto visivo attirerebbe subito l´attenzione.

La strumentazione insolita - spesso comunque ridotta al duo di Jan Kopinski insieme al pianoforte di Steve Iliffe - rende gli impasti sonori originali, sebbene quello che più convince è il sassofono del leader, dal fraseggio lento e carico d´espressività che si ispira al jazz moderno e che però ben si inserisce nel contesto di questo film.

La sua idea sembra azzardata, eppure funziona, sia che si sieda in una sala cinematografica o che si ascolti senza supporto visivo l`ipotetica colonna sonora. I due mezzi di espressione artistica, il film e la musica, riescono ad esprimere il loro messaggio - e per forza di cose il film di Dovzhenko lo ha fatto fino adesso - anche separatamente. Ma è certo da segnalare come il tentativo di Kopinski ben si integri con le visioni del regista ucraino, anzi, fa da perfetto accompagnamento alle immagini girate in un epoca in cui il jazz era ancora agli inizi.

Le due opere si fondono insieme perfettamente invitantoci a riflettere sul significato dell´arte moderna e sulle contaminazioni fra modi di espressione di periodi diversi. Un´impresa che ha dell´improbabile se si ascoltano i rulli di pianola che accompagnavano i film muti dell´epoca in cui fu girato Zemlya. Kopinski ha trasceso il mero aspetto tecnico del film - muto e in bianco e nero - di cui ha firmato la colonna sonora per gli spettatori di oggi - comprendendone l´essenza e trasportandola apparentemente senza sforzo nell´epoca moderna.