Alina Bzhezhinska

Alina Bzhezhinska serves as harpist, composer, and bandleader while founding and directing the HipHarpCollective. London, England forms her base, where classical training underpins fluency across classical, jazz, pop, rock, and electronica idioms. Organic jazz instrumentation merges with electronics in her warm, cascading approach to modal and spiritual jazz. Early immersion in Alice Coltrane’s and Dorothy Ashby’s jazz harp innovations sparked a lasting campaign to advance the instrument within jazz. Harp Recital appeared in 2005 as a solo project spanning classical music, folk songs, and jazz standards. Years of intensive practice and live work on the London scene alongside Django Bates, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and the Glasgow String Quartet preceded the formation of a jazz quartet and the 2018 release of the globally acclaimed Inspiration. During the 2020 pandemic she established HipHarpCollective, an ensemble that broadened the harp’s presence through expanded collaborations and stylistic range; the group recorded Reflections, issued in September 2022. In 2024 she and Hip Harp Collective saxophonist Tony Kofi released the duo album Altera Vita.

Born in Ukraine to a Polish-Ukrainian family, Bzhezhinska pursued classical harp studies throughout her schooling. She earned a Master’s degree from the F. Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, Poland, then traveled abroad for jazz performance training at the University of Arizona, completing a Master’s in Music Performance. After graduation she settled in the U.K. in 2002 and spent seven years as resident harp tutor at the prestigious Royal Conservatory of Scotland. Ensembles during that period ranged from the World Youth Symphony Orchestra and the National Opera in Warsaw to the Scottish Opera. Her solo debut, Harp Recital, surfaced in 2005 and featured classical compositions, folk songs, jazz standards, and an original piece.

Serious engagement with jazz led Bzhezhinska to woodshed in Glasgow and throughout Europe before she moved to London and assembled a group featuring Tony Kofi, bassist Larry Bartley, and drummer Joel Prime. The Barbican Centre’s November 2017 presentation of A Concert for Alice and John introduced the then-unknown quartet to wider English audiences as openers for headliner Pharoah Sanders. Kamaal Williams, struck by her performance, later invited her to contribute to Wu Hen.

HipHarpCollective secured a one-off agreement with Ubuntu and cut Inspiration in 2018 under a PRS Women Make Music Award. The nine-track program comprised four Alice Coltrane compositions, John Coltrane’s “Blue Nile” (introduced to Bzhezhinska by Shabaka Hutchings years earlier), and five originals by Bzhezhinska. Critical acclaim followed across the U.K. and Europe. The quartet toured the U.K., appeared at the WOMADelaide Festival in Australia, the Worldwide FM Festival in London, and on BBC Radio 3, then performed at the Edinburgh International Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Royal Albert Hall, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club while opening for Gregory Porter and Omar.

Amid the pandemic Williams, Bzhezhinska, and Hutchings presented a widely noted livestreamed performance from artist Hassan Hajjaj’s London shop. Seeking fresh outlets for jazz and new contexts for the harp within the genre and London’s vibrant scene, she launched HipHarpCollective as both organization and band; the latter included Kofi, trumpeter Jay Phelps, bassists Mikele Montolli and Julie Walkington, percussionist Joel Prime, violinist Ying Xue, drummer Adam Teixeira, and guest vocalists. Recording of the debut album Reflections began in autumn 2020 and concluded in summer 2021.

Hip-hop beats, Afro-Latin jazz grooves, and trip-hop elements were layered over a balanced set of originals and covers that incorporated two John Coltrane-associated pieces (“Alabama” and “Afro Blue”), “Fire” (co-composed by Alice Coltrane and Joe Henderson), and a striking reading of Duke Ellington’s “African Flower.” Bzhezhinska produced the album, which Ben Lamdin of Nostalgia 77 engineered and mixed before BBE released it in September 2022.

At the album-launch party on the eve of release, word arrived of saxophonist Pharoah Sanders’s death. Kofi and Bzhezhinska offered a moving tribute through a duo rendering of his “Astral Travelling” that visibly affected attendees. The following evening Kofi composed “Altera Vita for Pharoah Sanders” in the studio with the harpist; that track anchored the duo album of the same name issued in April 2024. Bzhezhinska supplied percussion in addition to harp, while Ibiza-based saxophonist Muriel Grossman contributed tamboura remotely.