![]() |
Aleksandra Kwasniewska | |
---|---|
Born | Bielawa, Poland |
Genres | Pop, folk, jazz |
Occupation(s) | Singer, songwriter |
Instrument(s) | Vocals, piano |
Years active | 2004–present |
Labels | AK Music Ltd |
Aleksandra Kwasniewska (born in Bielawa, Poland) is a Polish folk-pop singer. Since 2005 she has lived and worked in London. She recorded and released her debut album Island Girl [1] with the band "The Belgian Sweets" in 2008. Aleksandra released her second album, The Sky is on Fire in 2012, and her third album „Clover” in 2017. Currently Aleksandra is a songwriter for the sync industry.
Kwasniewska studied English language at Wroclaw University in Poland, but she received her musical education at Jazz Faculty in Belgium. She graduated from the School of Popular Music in London and continues her studies at School for Singers in London, where she learns singing and song-writing.
In 2004, Kwasniewska worked with a number of Belgian musicians on The Polish Folk Jazz Project, including jazz saxophone player John Snauwaert, pianist Christian Mendoza, drummer Giovanni Barcella and double bass player Koen Kimpe. Later Kwasniewska was recommended to the Belgian producer and songwriter Pedro DeBruyckere, who invited her to sing lead vocals on his album The Rosebud Orchestra. She would later collaborate with some of these artists on her own album.
Kwasniewska kept in touch with her Belgian contacts, and eventually reunited with DeBruyckere and Kimpe to record her debut album, Island Girl. Keyboardist Peter Ryckeboer and drummer Neils Delvaux were also brought on board with Kimpe as a part of The Belgian Sweets band. The ten track album was notable for including poetry by renowned writer Halina Poświatowska set to music.
The album was funded independently and released through the 33 Jazz label in the United Kingdom, Poland, and Japan. Island Girl was warmly received by critics and music journalists, and was ranked alongside the earlier achievements of Anna Maria Jopek and Aga Zaryan. The group embarked on a tour across Europe in support of the album. During this time, they performed at many well-known venues in London, including Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, Barbican Centre, and the Royal National Theatre.
In addition to her solo work, Kwasniewska has collaborated with various artists from the UK and Poland. She was spotted singing in a café and invited to record an EP for a London-based electronica project. She also contributed harmony vocals to the single "Glowa do gory" by UK/Poland based rock band The Poise Rite.
After the successful tour, Kwasniewska went back into the studio to begin work on her next album. In May 2011, Aleksandra & The Belgian Sweets played new material from the upcoming album in Belgium and Holland, where they had the chance to perform at the Music Village in Brussels to the enthusiastic response of the international audience.
Kwasniewska's second album, The Sky is on Fire, was released in 2012. It was preceded by lead single "Snow in July," written by producer DeBruyckere. The song was released to iTunes stores on 19 December 2011.
Along with The Belgian Sweets trio, the album includes support from Renato Marquez on violin, and album engineer HT Roberts adding parts on bouzouki, mandolin, 12-string and 6-string acoustic guitar. The album included additional poetry from Poświatowska and an update of the tango "Ostatnia Niedziela."
The Slits were a punk rock band based in London, formed there in 1976 by members of the groups the Flowers of Romance and the Castrators. The group's early line-up consisted of Ari Up and Palmolive, with Viv Albertine and Tessa Pollitt replacing founding members Kate Korus and Suzy Gutsy. Their 1979 debut album, Cut, has been called one of the defining releases of the post-punk era.
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator. His career includes more than fifty recordings as a leader and more than 500 published compositions. His ensembles include the Dave Douglas Quintet; Sound Prints, a quintet co-led with saxophonist Joe Lovano; Uplift, a sextet with bassist Bill Laswell; Present Joys with pianist Uri Caine and Andrew Cyrille; High Risk, an electronic ensemble with Shigeto, Jonathan Aaron, and Ian Chang; and Engage, a sextet with Jeff Parker, Tomeka Reid, Anna Webber, Nick Dunston, and Kate Gentile.
Sweets from a Stranger is the fifth studio album by the British new wave group Squeeze, released April 30, 1982 through A&M. The album peaked at number 20 in the UK Albums Chart. The band split up soon after a world tour for the record, and the two main songwriters went on to record 1984's Difford & Tilbrook. Squeeze reunited and released Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti in 1985. As with all Squeeze albums, Chris Difford wrote the words first and Glenn Tilbrook would write the music afterwards often editing Difford's material to create a streamlined narrative. Tilbrook would record a demo afterwards and play it for Difford.
Maureen Ann "Moe" Tucker is an American musician and singer-songwriter who was the drummer for the New York City-based rock band the Velvet Underground. After they disbanded in the early 1970s, she left the music industry for a while, though her music career restarted in the 1980s, and continued into the 1990s. She has released four solo albums, where she played most of the instruments herself, and has periodically toured. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a member of the Velvet Underground.
Everything but the Girl are an English musical duo formed in Kingston upon Hull in 1982, consisting of lead singer, songwriter, composer and occasional guitarist Tracey Thorn and guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter, composer, producer and singer Ben Watt. The group's early works have been categorized as sophisti-pop with jazz influences before undergoing an electronic music turn following the worldwide success of the 1994 hit single "Missing", remixed by Todd Terry.
Pauline Matthews, better known by her stage name Kiki Dee, is an English pop singer. Known for her blue-eyed soul vocals, she was the first female singer from the UK to sign with Motown's Tamla Records.
The Jazz Butcher was the alias of British singer/songwriter Pat Fish. It also served as the name of the band, though adjuncts were frequently used to distinguish between Fish’s persona and band itself
Allison Louise Crowe is a Canadian singer, songwriter, guitarist, and pianist born in Nanaimo, British Columbia, whose home is Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Steven Bruce Smith is an American drummer best known as a member of the rock band Journey across three stints: 1978 to 1985, 1995 to 1998 and 2015 to 2020. Modern Drummer magazine readers have voted him the No. 1 All-Around Drummer five years in a row. In 2001, the publication named Smith one of the Top 25 Drummers of All Time, and in 2002 he was voted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Journey on April 7, 2017.
Phoebe Snow was an American roots music singer-songwriter and guitarist, known for her hit 1974 and 1975 songs "Poetry Man" and "Harpo's Blues", and her credited guest vocals backing Paul Simon on "Gone at Last". She was described by The New York Times as a "contralto grounded in a bluesy growl and capable of sweeping over four octaves". Snow also sang numerous commercial jingles for many U.S. products during the 1980s and 1990s, including General Foods International Coffees, Salon Selectives, and Stouffer's. Snow experienced success in Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s with five top 100 albums in that territory. In 1995 she recorded a gospel album with Sisters of Glory.
Trivium is an American heavy metal band from Orlando, Florida, formed in 1999. The band comprises vocalist and guitarist Matt Heafy, guitarist Corey Beaulieu, bassist Paolo Gregoletto, and drummer Alex Bent.
David Andrew Sitek is an American musician and record producer, known for his work with his band TV on the Radio. He has also worked with bands such as Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, Foals, Celebration, Little Dragon, Wavves, Beady Eye, and Weezer, and produced free jazz-influenced remixes of songs by artists such as Beck and Nine Inch Nails, and has contributed a solo track to the Red Hot Organization Dark Was the Night charity compilation. He is also a photographer and painter.
Christine Tobin is an Irish vocalist and composer from Dublin who has been part of the London jazz and improvising scene since the second half of the 1980s. She has been influenced by a diverse range of singers and writers including Betty Carter, Bessie Smith, Leonard Cohen, Olivier Messiaen, Miles Davis and poets William Butler Yeats, Paul Muldoon and Eva Salzman.
Los Campesinos! are a seven-piece indie pop band from Cardiff, Wales, formed in early 2006 at Cardiff University. The band has seen several lineup changes– lead vocalist Gareth David Paisey and guitarists Neil Turner and Tom Bromley are the only remaining original members, now joined by guitarist Rob Taylor, keyboardist Kim Paisey, bassist Matt Fidler and drummer Jason Adelinia.
This topic covers notable events and articles related to 2008 in music. This year was the peak of record sales in the United States, with sales declining year on year since then.
Tamara Diane Wimer, known professionally as Tamara Gee, is an American pop singer and songwriter. She grew up singing and performing from the age of 5, and was a professional vocalist by the time she was 12 years old, winning various singing competitions throughout her adolescence and adulthood, as well as a beauty pageant. Gee opened for vocalist Tony Bennett and his orchestra after being the featured vocalist on various albums throughout her teen years. She released her debut album Hidden Treasure with Universal Music in 2007, while living in Poland. Her single from the album, "For Life", was voted unanimous winner of Piosenka dla Europy, the Polish final for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest. Tamara and her song "For Life" was the first Polish entry in history to qualify out of a semifinal. A portion of Gee's Eurovision performance was shown on The Oprah Winfrey Show on "The World's Got Talent" episode with Simon Cowell where Gee sang with former participants Celine Dion and Julio Iglesias. In 2007 Gee co-wrote and performed "Fate" on DJ Schiller's album Sehnsucht. The album went triple platinum and was nominated for a Grammy. She released her solo EP Christmas Angel in 2009. On November 27, 2014, Tamara released a new highly anticipated album "Love, Tamara" of which she wrote with and was produced by Multi Grammy Award winning producer/songwriter Walter Afanasieff.
Escala is an electronic string quartet from London, England who rose to fame when they performed on and reached the final of the second series of Britain's Got Talent on ITV1 in May 2008.
This is a summary of 2006 in music in the United Kingdom.
"The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" is a song by American songwriter Jimmy Webb. It has become a much-recorded standard, without ever having charted as a single. Webb appropriated the title from the 1966 science fiction novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. The song is especially associated with Glen Campbell, who performed the song on his farewell tour, Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, and Joe Cocker, who first recorded the song in 1974.
Donna Grantis is a Canadian guitarist, best known for performing and recording with Prince & 3rdeyegirl. On September 30, 2014, Prince and 3rdeyegirl released their debut album, Plectrumelectrum, which reached #1 on the Billboard Rock chart. The album's title track, "Plectrumelectrum", was originally written by Grantis and later arranged by Prince. Since 2013, Grantis has been a member of Prince's funk supergroup, The New Power Generation. On November 16, 2018, Grantis released two new songs, “Trashformer” and “Violetta,” featuring Hall of Fame Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, as a limited edition 7” via his vinyl label HockeyTalkter Records. The tracks appear on Grantis’ debut album, Diamonds & Dynamite, released March 22, 2019, via eOne Music. The album and lead track reached #1 on iTunes Canada for top jazz album and top jazz song.