Anna Maria Jopek

Anna Maria Jopek, born December 14, 1970, is a Polish vocalist whose early years were shaped by immersion in her country’s traditional folk repertoire. She trained in classical piano at Warsaw’s Chopin Academy of Music and later pursued brief jazz studies at the Manhattan School of Music. Jopek entered the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest and received the Michel Legrand Award. Nearly a dozen of her recordings have earned gold or platinum status across Europe. She resists being defined exclusively as a jazz singer, yet Keith Jarrett’s influence remains prominent in her work. Incorporating elements of pop, Polish folk forms, and additional ethnic traditions, she merges sounds drawn from multiple contemporary sources in a manner comparable to her fellow Polish artist Grazyna Auguscik. Jopek appeared at Carnegie Hall in January 2004. Her collaborators have included Tomasz Stanko, Pat Metheny, Richard Bona, Branford Marsalis, Christian McBride, Dhafer Youssef, Gordon Haskell, Mino Cinelu, and Manu Katche.