Urszula Dudziak

Urszula Dudziak forged an independent career as a vocalist after her marriage to Polish jazz violinist Michal Urbaniak ended. Equipped with a four-and-a-half octave range, she earned the Los Angeles Times designation of "jazz singer of the year" in 1979. Throughout the 1980s she collaborated repeatedly with the late Gil Evans, appearing on the albums Live at Umbria Jazz '87, captured at the Italian festival, and Last Session, which also featured Sting. She served as a featured vocalist alongside Archie Shepp, Lester Bowie, and Bobby McFerrin during that decade and joined the Vocal Summit Group in the early 1990s with Jay Clayton, Jeanne Lee, Bobby McFerrin, Norma Winstone, Michele Hendricks, and Lauren Newton. In 2000 she performed as featured soloist with the Vienna Art Orchestra on "Artistry in Rhythm -- A European Suite." Her seven-year association with Krzysztof Zawadzki's band Walk Away produced four albums from 1987 to 1994. In 1996 she joined Koledy Ur and Grazyna Auguscik to record an album of jazz arrangements of traditional Christmas carols. Having studied piano and voice in Poland from the late 1950s onward, Dudziak first became captivated by jazz upon hearing a 1959 radio broadcast of Ella Fitzgerald. She met Urbaniak in 1965 while both played in a short-lived jazz ensemble and began performing with him the next year in an electric jazz group. From 1965 to 1969 the pair appeared regularly in Scandinavia before relocating to New York in 1974. Since 1967 she has woven Polish folk, rock, and classical elements into her work and developed a distinctive style of wordless singing.