"She used to say that the piano was like sun rising … and when sun set it was like a harp." Alina Bzhezhinska on Alice Coltrane
Ahead of her forthcoming 10-date Music Network tour, Polish-Ukrainian jazz harpist Alina Bzhezhinska spoke to the Journal of Music about her musical background, the inspiration of Alice Coltrane, and learning the Scottish harp.
If you listen to Alina Bzhezhinska’s albums, Harp Recital and Inspiration, you’ll hear a radical difference between the two, and not just because they are over a decade apart. Trained as a classical harpist, beginning in Lviv in Ukraine where she is from, and then gaining scholarships to study in Poland, Germany and the US, Bzhezhinska has always been on a quest to transform her musical language.
"This idea of playing a different style was in my head since I was a child. I wanted to express myself through the harp using my own language. I still love playing classical music, but playing works by other composers not always gave me the satisfaction of expressing myself the way I wanted to."
After a rigorous classical training, studies with Dr Carrol McLaughlin at the University of Arizona began to open her eyes to different musical languages, and then hearing recordings by Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashley brought her into the world of jazz...