Grażyna Auguścik

Grażyna Auguścik (born 17 August 1955) is a Polish jazz vocalist, composer and arranger. In her individualistic and international in character singing repertoire she frequently utilizes Polish folk music, Latin American music and Klezmer music.

Career
Grażyna studied guitar in her native Słupsk, Poland. Later she studied vocal, graduating in 1992 from Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Her singing debut took place in 1977 at a festival in Toruń. At the National Festival of Polish Song in Opole in 1979 she won in the category of first-time contestants. W 1981 won prizes at the Student Festival of Song in Kraków and at the Festival of Traditional Jazz "Złota Tarka" in Warsaw.

In 1988, Grażyna moved to the United States, where she has performed with Michał Urbaniak and Urszula Dudziak, and many other leading jazz musicians, including Jim Hall, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, John Medeski, Patricia Barber, Paul Wertico, Bobby Enriquez, Terry Callier, John McLean, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Robert Irving III. Auguścik lives and frequently performs in Chicago since 1994. She has participated in the programs of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, bringing "traditional Eastern European music into the jazz idiom, providing a new link to the universality of the language of jazz". In 2002, 2003, 2004 i 2006 r. she was declared Best Jazz Vocal by the European Jazz Forum Magazine. Auguścik has toured all over the world. Some of her albums have been highly acclaimed and popular with jazz audiences, and have consistently placed in Top 10 Charts (e.g. by the College Music Journal).

Grażyna has recorded 15 albums, including two with Urszula Dudziak, her fellow top-ranking Polish female jazz vocalist.

Discography

 * Sunrise Sunset (Polskie Nagrania Muza, 1988)
 * Kolędy polskie (Polish Christmas Carols) (1996; with Urszula Dudziak)
 * Don't Let Me Go (1996)
 * Pastels (1998; with Bogdan Hołownia)
 * Fragile (2000; with Paulinho Garcia)
 * To i Hola (2000; with Urszula Dudziak)
 * River (2001)
 * PastForward (2003)
 * The Light (2005)
 * Lulajże (The Lullaby For Jesus) (2005)
 * Live Sounds Live (2007)
 * Andança (2008; with Paulinho Garcia)
 * Personal Selection (2011)
 * The Beatles Nova (2011)
 * Man behind the sun (2012; songs of Nick Drake)