Biography
Alexandr Misko, a Russian guitarist of exceptional skill, commands a fingerstyle approach whose brilliance echoes Alex de Grassi and Michael Hedges. Public notice arrived in 2016 once his finger-tapped YouTube treatment of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” spread rapidly online. Born that same year in the southern city of Krasnodar, he absorbs ideas from an expansive range of sources, among them minimalists Steve Reich and Philip Glass, together with the idioms of technical death metal, shoegaze, cloud rap, chillstep, and new age. The Songs of Adolescence, a collection of his own pieces, appeared shortly after the Jackson clip’s success. His second album, 2017’s Beyond the Box, gathered several widely viewed covers—Wham!’s “Careless Whisper,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and the already mentioned “Billie Jean”—each rendered through his trademark fingerstyle technique.