Career
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.
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 Krakow area.
In 1993 he established the group First Rate (at Lloyd's)"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 Krakow"s Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret – including Zygmunt Konieczny, January 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".
