Aleksander Glondys

Aleksander Glondys (b. January 30, 1957 in Bielsko-Biała, Poland) is a Polish jazz and rock drummer who led the group Al'Mad. The group was described in music journalist Robert Buczek's article for Jazzi Magazine as "one of Poland's finest hard-bop formations". He is also a translator of English-language literature who has received particular recognition for his translations of works concerning jazz, acknowledged by the Encyclopedia of Jazz as Poland's most outstanding translator of jazz literature. Glondys is the creator of the project Fascynacje, a multinational arts and culture-oriented web portal, and is currently involved with its development.

Aleksander Glondys debuted on the musical stage around 1969 in the group Dynastie, followed by Genesis, playing with his brother as well as Krzysztof and Roman Nehrebecki, sons of the renowned Polish animator Władysław Nehrebecki, who provided the real-life inspiration for that artist's (and arguably Poland's) two most famous cartoon characters, the eponymous heroes of the animated series Bolek i Lolek .

In 1979 he was co-founder of the Jacek Kasza Quartet, later known as Support. Both of these bands received group awards at the Jazz Juniors festival in Cracow, and Wrocław's Jazz on the Oder in 1979 and 1980.

Since the mid-1980s he has combined his work as a musician with that of a translator of English-language literature, limiting his concert performances primarily to the Kraków area. In 1993 he established the group Al'Mad, which included trumpeter Adam Kawończyk, guitarist Marek Piątek and bassist Marian Pawlik. The continuation of this band is known as the Aleksander Glondys Quartet, which has included a number of renowned Polish jazz musicians over the years, among them saxophonists Leszek Szczerba and Janusz Witko. Glondys also played in the band Homo Twist, founded by the Krakovian avant-garde poet/songwriter Maciej Maleńczuk. Towards the end of the 1990s he initiated a more jazz-oriented musical project: The "Ellington, Krakow-style" concert, in which Duke Ellington's compositions were arranged by the foremost composers from Kraków's Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret – including Zygmunt Konieczny, Jan Kanty Pawluśkiewicz, Zbigniew Raj and Grzegorz Turnau – for a 25-piece orchestra which performed in Kiev, Stockholm, and several other cities. In January 2000, this concert was described in the Polish weekly magazine Przekrój as "...an ingeniously bold and unpretentious idea".

As a translator of English-language literature Aleksander Glondys has worked with various publishing houses – including Amber, Książnica, Rebis, Wydawnictwo Literackie and Znak. He is recognized as Poland's foremost specialist in the area of translating jazz-themed material. His works include James Lincoln Collier's biography of Duke Ellington, the Guinness Encyclopedia of Jazz, John Fordham's Jazz on CD, and Mark C. Gridley's Jazz Styles. In addition to this, Aleksander Glondys teaches English according to a method he developed himself, which is based on the concept of generative grammar. Glondys's teaching method treats grammar as a simple mechanism, which serves in the construction of sentences in English. Using this approach, a learner can be acquainted with the entire language by means of essentially two four-element constructions; it is a highly effective method for teaching the English language. Aleksander Glondys's latest initiative is arts and culture web portal Fascynacje, which is being developed in cooperation with over 50 entities, from every region of the world.