One of the most popular Polish jazz singers

‘Just thirty seconds of Anna's tune belong to the most beautiful music I've heard in months’ - Pat Metheny said at the press conference when their album ‘Upojenie’ went gold on the day of its release.
‘I couldn't think of anything more inspiring, motivating and ear opening than working with Pat. He's been my first and most important mentor for years, but to actually make music with him was the most thrilling experience in my life...’ - Anna Maria Jopek commented on their project. ‘Anna Maria Jopek and Friends with Pat Metheny: Upojenie’. The unique, one of a kind tribute to the master composer and guitarist and 15-time Grammy Award Winner became an instant classic, selling over 80,000 copies in just thirty days.
The Universal recording artist is a classically trained pianist and graduated from Chopin's Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland. After briefly studying in Manhattan School of Music's Jazz Department Anna decided not to play Mozart concertos anymore and trade her beloved Ravel for Keith Jarrett. Philharmonic Hall for small, smoky clubs and theatres.
‘Please do not file my music under jazz’, Anna Maria Jopek says though. Nor under pop, folk... whatever. I embrace a lot of influences. Jazz is by far the most important in its freedom, its harmony and its sense of time but I was brought up with the old Polish folk songs. So I'm kind of rooted here in all these Slavic landscapes and sounds.

With 10 albums of her own Anna Maria Jopek performed and recorded with all the important artists in Poland including numerous concerts and recordings with an ECM-based trumpeter Tomasz Stańko. During the Jazz Jamboree International Festival 40th Anniversary Gala in 1998 she performed with one of the greatest
In 2003 at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, invited by the First Family, Anna gave a small recital broadcasted live and dueted with the pop icon, former King Crimson frontman, Gordon Haskell.
Although she plays open air gigs for 5,000 fans, as happened in Warsaw in June of 2001, and 8,000 in Augustów in July 2003, Anna prefers an intimate setting to a huge concert hall and performs about 100 concerts each year, from Toronto to Vienna, London to Berlin. Yet her Carnegie Hall appearance on January 4 2004, remains one of the most cherished and memorable thrills of her professional life.
Yes, she has been given awards, including Michel Legrand's Personal Award in Witebsk in 1994, not to mention literally all of the Polish prestigious awards and Gold and Platinum records. Nevertheless Anna Maria Jopek is known for saying: ‘Music itself is the highest award for me. And the greatest challenge. With so many questions remaining to be answered’.
Let's leave the last word to Pat Metheny: ‘Anna is original, unique, different. She's brave, she's modest, she's open. She's a great musician. What she's been doing all her life is just trying to play the best notes.
Trying to sound good. In that particular sense she's a lot like me and that's why I decided to work with her. Because she just cares for the music.