Aleksandra Kwasniewska

Island Girl (2008)

Kwasniewska stayed in touch with her Belgian collaborators, eventually reuniting with producer Pedro DeBruyckere and double bass player Koen Kimpe to cut her first record, Island Girl. Keyboardist Peter Ryckeboer and drummer Neils Delvaux rounded out The Belgian Sweets band. The ten-track album set poems by renowned writer Halina Poświatowska to music. Funded independently, it came out on the 33 Jazz label in the United Kingdom, Poland, and Japan.

Critics and music journalists gave it a warm reception, placing it alongside earlier work by Anna Maria Jopek and Aga Zaryan. The group toured Europe, hitting well-known London venues like Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, the Barbican Centre, and the Royal National Theatre. Outside her solo work, Kwasniewska sang harmony vocals on the single "Glowa do gory" by the UK/Poland rock band The Poise Rite, after being spotted singing in a café and invited to record an EP for a London-based electronica project.

The Sky is on Fire (2012)

After the tour wrapped, Kwasniewska headed back to the studio for her next album. In May 2011, she and The Belgian Sweets played fresh material in Belgium and Holland, including a show at the Music Village in Brussels that drew an enthusiastic response from the international crowd. Her second album, The Sky is on Fire, dropped in 2012.

The lead single, "Snow in July," written by DeBruyckere, hit iTunes stores on 19 December 2011. Alongside The Belgian Sweets trio, the album featured Renato Marquez on violin and engineer HT Roberts adding bouzouki, mandolin, 12-string and 6-string acoustic guitar parts. It included more poetry by Poświatowska and an update of the tango "Ostatnia Niedziela."

Did You Know?

• Kwasniewska studied English at Wroclaw University but got her musical education at the Jazz Faculty in Belgium.
• Her third album is titled Clover and came out in 2017.