Danish songwriter Stefan Mork is most known for his collaboration with
Lonnie Kjer in their duo-project Lonnie Kjer & Stefan Mork.

With the release of their debut album 13 Songs, has Kjer & Mork already established themselves on the European music scene as an attractive and unique folk/pop duo.

Completely devoid of easy solutions and with the proverbial tongue firmly placed in the cheek, it stubbornly and proudly goes against mainstream and market shares to give a deeply honest example of how it sounds when music truly is taken seriously. There are no sneaky shortcuts – only the direct path to the honest essence of musicality and deep love and devotion of music. Burning real and melting hot.

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Maciek Zembaty – satirist, singer, songwriter, script writer, translator, man of letters and director of radio plays - is first of all an expert and admirer of Leonard Cohen’s music who has made this great artist’s works popular in Poland. For years he has been translating and performing Leonard’s texts in Polish.
Maciek Zembaty is a Taurus and a Monkey. As everyone else he comes from Wadowice. He has lived in Katowice, Kraków, the Tricity, Hamburg, Katmandu, Berkley, Beijing and Islamabad. He’s been punished for being politically involved. He studied art and music (piano). He’s a graduale of Polish studies at Warsaw University where he wrote his MA thesis on prison songs. He is entitled to drive as well as to direct movies. His favourite pastime is cooking but to earn his living he dabbles in poety, music, film, journalism. Read the rest of this entry »

With over 11,000 albums sold independently, and over 200 concerts per year, Ann Vriend has earned a well-respected name for herself in many countries in the folk, roots, and independent pop music circuits. With her immediately identifiable and gripping voice, her strongly melodic and poetic writing style, and her self-accompanying prowess on the piano, Vriend is often compared to innovative artists such as Regina Spektor, Imogen Heap, Katie Melua and Joni Mitchell. She is also known for her great rapport with her audiences, engaging them with witty humour and gripping stories between her powerfully delivered songs.

Now, with the release of her new and already acclaimed live album, entitled Closer Encounters (recorded at live concerts in Australia and Canada from 2008 –2009), Ann Vriend’s music is soaring into even more concert halls, airwaves, eardrums, and hearts.

http://www.myspace.com/annvriend

Veronica Marchi was born in Verona in 1982 on the last day of the year. Her first record, simply named after her, was released in 2005 and produced by Luigi Pecere (La Matricula / Venus). It contains ten songs written in the previous ten years, coloured and dressed up by Veronica herself and Mauro Magnani, with the help of a bunch of great musicians. She then travelled through the whole country with an essential and bare acoustic show and spent the following two years hard-working, confronting with the audience and other collegues and refining her artistic skills. She received a lot of good reviews and was asked as guest star for other famous Italian artists’ shows.
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Mirosław Czyżykiewicz is considered one of the most renowned representatives of ‘author song’ as well as what in Poland is referred to as ‘sung poetry’. He performs to the texts by authors such as Josif Brodski, Thomas Hardy, K.I. Gałczyński Edward Stachura, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Różewicz, Włodzimierz Wysocki. A prizewinner of many festivals, deemed the master of pensive mood, he is one of the most original and charismatic performers of the kind in Poland. In the years 1986 and 1987 he was a FAMA (Academic Youth Arts Festiwal in Swinoujscie)

Czyżykiewicz repeatedly appeared Review of Stage Songs in Wrocław and on Student’s Song Festival in Kraków (in 2003 during the gala concert celebrating the music of Leonard Cohen he charmed the audience with his performance of “Sisters of Mercy” and “First We Take Manhattan.”)

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Paweł Orkisz is an author of mellow ballads and popular songs. For 30 years he has been singing his own compositions and he has performed songs by the greatest songwriters of our times. In Poland recognized as one of the greatest performers of songs by Cohen, Okudżawa and Wysocki.

He is a versatile author who composes Christmas carols as well as patriotic songs. Affiliated with Kraków’s “Beczka” group during the martial law he gave concerts for opposition activists all over Poland. In 70s he edited songbooks immensely popular across the country, the fact which also accounts for the diversity of his repertoire. The music and the lyrics in his songs work together to create the cheerful mood in which he talks of love and hope.

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Circle Trio is an initiative of brothers – Wojciech and Kuba – dating back to the beginning of 2010. They attended the same music school in Lidzbark Warmiński and were inspired by similar music. Recently they were joined by Piotr Gibner, who enriched their music with his incredible voice. The Trio is working on an album to be released at the beginning of 2011.

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“Ann Vriend sings with the heart-stopping intensity of Aretha Franklin, plays piano with the ease of Norah Jones and writes songs as powerful in their simplicity as those of Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen“

Elle Magazine

Upon hearing Ann Vriend’s heartbreaking and exquisite voice people of all demographics stop in their tracks.

After which point the content and production of Ann’s writing breathlessly captivates until the very end, of both her stunning live shows and her cinematic, sophisticated pop albums. Her uncompromisingly fresh style has garnered comparisons to eccentrics such as Fiona Apple or Kate Bush, soaring pop epics such as David Gray or Katie Melua, fresh young piano divas such Gavin DeGraw and Sarah Slean, and alternately joyous and heartbreaking as icons such as Emmylou Harris and Paul Simon.

She passionately performs her music around the world, from New York to Berlin, Melbourne to Paris, and in her home and native land of Canada.

Writes American Music Biographer David Ritz:

“Once every generation a singer-songwriter emerges with the creative fire to set the music world ablaze. Ann Vriend has that fire.”

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Quartet Klezmer Trio (QKT) is known as a band performing traditional instrumental and vocal Jewish and Balkan Klezmer music. They perform inspired music with the traditional music of Ashkenazi Jews. Draw from traditional melodies of the Galician Diaspora, linking them with contemporary executive traditions and modern sounds.

Quartet Klezmer Trio consists of four instruments: the viola, the accordion, the bass, and…… a vocal of a unique quality; and three professional musicians, who guarantee the best level of their performances.

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Chamber choir QUATTRO VOCI was established in 1999 in Kraków. A year later it came under the auspices of Dworek Białoprądnicki Centre of Culture and Artur Sędzielarz became its conductor. The group’s performances include musical compositions from medieval to modern, as well as vocal-instumental compositions, Gospel and modern arrangements of contemporary pop music.

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Urszula Makosz is a classically trained singer with a long-standing passion for Jewish music. Her voice brings to mind the Berlin cabaret singers of the 1920s, and her musical style is characterized by unusual dramatic intensity.Her repertoire includes mainly traditional songs in Yiddish, Ladino and Hebrew; among her favourite pieces are those written and sung in the Jewish ghettos, which she collectively labels “Songs of the Ghettos and Jewish Resistance”. Delivered with a theatrical flourish, her music offers a glimpse into the myriad layers that make up what is sometimes conveniently termed as “Jewish culture”, encompassing its various shades and linguistic traditions.

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