NEWS
JACOPO’S FIRST SOLO ALBUM IS OUT!!!
Jacopo Costa – Teachers and Demons
PUT THE CANDLE BACK video got nominated at the HOPL’AWARDS!
JACOPO COSTA – ELECTROACOUSTIC SONGS – TEASER
TOUR
MERCH
BIO
Musician, composer, musicologist
Italian-born Jacopo Costa moved to Strasbourg in 2008 to complete the studies he had begun at the Milan Conservatory and has since developed a diversified musical career, between creative projects, collaborations, and university research.
Fascinated since childhood by the acoustic dimension of the world, his artistic path has been profoundly marked by his exposure to the music of Frank Zappa, the so-called “Canterbury scene”, Rock In Opposition, as well as Prince, Burt Bacharach, 20th-century avant-garde music, the Beatles, Paul Simon, XTC and the Broadway tradition…
After training in the field of “serious” music (for a Master’s degree in classical percussion at the Haute École des Arts du Rhin, Strasbourg), he specialized in music stemming from the rock universe but defying any form of categorization. Jacopo’s instruments of choice are drums and vibraphone; his love of vocal music prompted him to take up singing, while his interest in production led him to delve deeper into computer-aided music production.
Alongside his artistic activity, in 2018 he obtained a doctorate in musicology at the University of Strasbourg, and in 2023 he became the university’s first lecturer with a position specifically focused on popular music.
Jacopo Costa has collaborated with orchestras, contemporary music ensembles and bands of various types. He is the founder of Loomings, an art rock band active between 2014 and 2020, and is currently a member of future-jazz band Oiapok (playing vibraphone and marimba), micro-orchestra La Bagatelle du Géant (playing vibraphone), The Juke Revue (a trio of blues and jazz covers from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s, where he sings and plays drums) and Fracktal (King Crimson cover band, playing drums).
In 2020 he formed the one-man band Electroacoustic Songs, where he works on extending the limits of the song form through his own compositions and with a carefree approach to stylistic distinctions
ELECTROACOUSTIC SONGS
The project
Taking advantage of the lockdown months of 2020, Jacopo Costa caught the opportunity to launch a project that had been coveted for years: a one-man band, in which to play his own compositions accompanied by a variety of instruments.
The songs in the repertoire are played on a kit consisting of an amplified vibraphone, some drum elements and a microphone for vocals, as well as a few machines (sampling pad, master keyboard, laptop). Indeed, the computer-aided production experience developed in previous years has enabled him to link the various sound sources and process them in real time with an electronic patch, triggering effects, loops and samples at precise moments during the songs.
The nature of this hybrid kit raises a number of challenges, not least in terms of writing and playing: Jacopo takes the expression “one-man band” literally, designing arrangements and compositions to sound like a multi-piece band, which means learning modes of playing that border on juggling!
As its title suggests, Electroacoustic Songs is a songwriting project, although in the broadest sense of the term: neither too long nor too short musical pieces, with sung lyrics. These “songs” – dreamlike, audaciously offbeat – are conceived as the letters of an imaginary correspondence: from a literary point of view, they fall into the epistolary genre, while musically they could be described as “explorations”.
The Show
In 2022, the stage dimension of Electroacoustic Songs evolved from a concert to a fully-fledged show. Thanks to residencies at Strasbourg’s Espace Django and Illkirch’s Illiade, the live set has been enhanced with a scenography (incorporating spotlights and mirrors all around the instruments) and a lighting design synchronized with the music: the visionary universe evoked by the repertoire is thus reflected in its visual dimension.
The Team
Guido Pedicone – technicien son
Mélanie Gerber – conception des lumières et éclairagiste
Malu França – scénographe
MUSIC
VIDEOS
Live Showcase and interview (TV7, Colmar, June 2025)
OTHER PROJECTS
Oiapok
Oiapok is an eight-piece orchestral progressive rock collective founded in Strasbourg in 2020. Oiapok is a neologism, a combination of the Guyanese river Oyapock, the cradle of fearless adventurers, and the belt of the Chariclo asteroid, Oiapoque, whose orbit crosses that of the outer planets of the solar system.
Oiapok’s music blends all kinds of influences and styles. It draws its inspiration from 70s progressive rock and funk, film music and Afro-Cuban rhythms: a band with atypical instrumentation (harp, marimba, vibraphone, brass, bass, drums, guitar, vocals) and wide-ranging influences from jazz-fusion to funk, repetitive music to African and Brazilian music.
The Juke Revue
The Juke Revue invites you on a musical journey through America in the first half of the 20th century. The trio revives the songs and musical styles of the period—New Orleans jazz, blues, folk, ragtime, swing—through the whimsical story of a concert they are supposed to give in the American South.
La Bagatelle du Géant
Jacopo plays vibraphone in the mini mobile brass band La Bagatelle du Géant, which performs in a variety of venues: festivals, gardens, barges, forests, rooftops, fairs, and so on. Their “post-retro-old-fashioned-cutting-edge” musical universe will delight audiences of all kinds. Clownish moods rub shoulders with dreamlike atmospheres, freshly dusted-off old waltzes meet revisited electro standards, and period film scores make cameo appearances while the magic of old swing continues to work its charm. Vibraphone, trombone, flute, and accordion blend into a unique sound, and this small orchestra travels wherever the opportunity arises to enchant the world.
FraCKtal
Jacopo is the drummer for FraKCtal, a King Crimson cover band. Created by former musicology students at the University of Strasbourg and bringing together some of their professors, FraKCtal celebrates the 50th anniversary of the formation of 1970s King Crimson, and the album trilogy comprised of Lark’s Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black, and Red.
Past Projects
Loomings (2014-2020)
An art-rock band with a strong emphasis on vocal polyphony, Loomings played Jacopo’s compositions. During its period of existence, the band released two albums: Everyday Mythology (Altrock, 2015) and Hey Weirdo! (Soleil Mutant, 2019).
Camembert (2008-2020)
Camembert is the previous incarnation of Oiapok, with a more marked bent for offbeat science fiction. Jacopo played drums with the band between 2012 and 2016, and features on the band’s second album, Negative Toe (Altrock, 2017).
Sessionman
Would you like me to record percussion or drum parts for your project? Feel free to visit my Airgigs profile!
Popular Music Research and Teaching
Jacopo Costa is a lecturer in musicology at the University of Strasbourg, with a specialization in popular music. His main areas of research are musical experimentation in rock music and popular music policies in France. He recently published a book with Delatour France entitled Le rock des expérimentateurs and co-edited an issue of the Volume! journal. In addition, he has spoken at several international conferences, including at Oxford University, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and Monmouth University in the United States. He is an associate researcher at the ACCRA laboratory (Approches Contemporaines de la Création et de la Réflexion Artistiques).