Henry Koperski Isn’t Joking Anymore

“And on keys . . .” The spotlight pivots, a humble nod, a wave. Rarely do you hear “On bassoon . . .” Not to mention the accordion. But Henry Koperski, an L.A.-based musician and composer who plays all three of those instruments (plus saxophone, “and also clarinet and flute, but just for fun”), has made a name for himself accompanying, mostly on piano, musically inclined comedians such as Matteo Lane, Catherine Cohen, Matt Rogers, Larry Owens, and Alan Cumming in their cabaret endeavors and streaming specials. So now you’ve been introduced to Henry Koperski—but what about his alter ego, Henki Skidu?

Recently, before a solo Skidu show in Williamsburg of original songs, covers (Bernstein, “Brandy”), and something in between (“I’m a Beethoven freak, so I took his chord structures and wrote my own lyrics”), Koperski—thirty-four, sandy-blond hair and scruff, in a T-shirt that read “Normalize Spiritual Ecstasy”—sipped a passion-fruit margarita in a vegan restaurant and explained his alias. It’s a mashup of “Henry” with the Sumerian trickster god Enki and Gilgamesh’s lover Enkidu, synthesized during an acid trip on Halloween, while dressed as the Hermit tarot card (big coat and hat, with a Bluetooth speaker on a carabiner as a lantern: “No one knew what I was”).

Koperski pulled something from his backpack—a gray rock with a hole in it that he’d found on a Santa Monica beach and had strung twine through. He wears it when he performs as Skidu. “I feel magical when I wear it. I feel really grounded. The first time I wore it in public, I went to this gay bar in L.A. called Precinct. And I felt like I was best friends with everyone there. People just started talking to me.”

About the big rock around his neck? “Yeah, one person said, ‘Oh, is that a seeing stone?’ And I was, like, ‘What’s a seeing stone?’ Then I started looking through it, and I decided that I can see people’s true, one-word essence.” (In his interlocutor’s case: “Open.”)

After studying jazz saxophone and classical bassoon at Western Michigan University, Koperski moved to New York and took improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade. “We would do these shows where you’d take a movie and a musical and mash them together. The first one we did was ‘Star Wars: Episode I’ with ‘Annie.’ ” The comedian Jo Firestone played Yoda and sang “You Are Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile.”

When he works with comedians, Koperski said, “there’s this humor vibration that I feel like I can tap into. Like with Cat Cohen, she’d be singing a song about, like, her asshole, but it’s not about that.” The collaboration, he said, “is about the musical connection that you can have with someone. It’s like we’re both playing the same drum set or something.

“Sometimes I think I got into comedy because I was scared to be a musician,” he mused, chewing a cauliflower “wing.” “Anything you do, you can be, like, ‘Well, I was just joking.’ Now I’m really trying to only be sincere and authentic, which is equally scary.”

During the pandemic, he started reading up on Gnosticism. “So, in the beginning, there were the Aeons,” he said. “Sophia, which means ‘wisdom’ in Greek, was one of them, and she wanted to see herself, or observe herself. So she plunged out of the Pleroma, into the abyss. It was swirling chaos.” For that night’s showcase (title: “A Thesis of Who I Think I Am Right Now”), Koperski planned to sing a composition about Sophia (“Open your hidden eye to view the colors of your heart”).

He described being in a greenroom before a comedy show in L.A. last year. “Everyone was being wacky and a hundred and ten per cent and talking over each other and being so desperately something. And I recorded it. I actually put it on a song on my album. You can barely hear it, but I put it in there because it’s the essence of chaos. Chaos is five comedians in a greenroom.”

He strolled over to the venue for his show, Scholes Street Studio. The room was filling up, and two women chatted about microdosing. “The cool thing is that it’s working behind the scenes,” one said. “Henry would be a great guide.”

Koperski introduced a song that “came from an improvisation from when I ordered an Uber to the airport and it was, like, twelve minutes away.” Skidu began to sing, eyes closed. “It’s time to gooooo. A place where I can hear my soul,” he crooned. “My Self and nobody else.” ♦