Thana Alexa
Jackson Heights, NY
Thana Alexa is a Grammy nominated Croatian-American vocalist, composer, producer and jazz festival director whose music blends elements of jazz, world music and electronic soundscapes, while placing importance on social activism & uplifting female voices. Her 2020 2x Grammy nominated album ONA was inspired by the cross-generational and cross-cultural stories of the immigrant women in her family and evolved into an exploration of the experiences of contemporary women everywhere. Her trio’s 2022 album SONICA – fully engineered and produced by Alexa and co-lead with Grammy winning artist, Nicole Zuraitis and bassist, Julia Adamy – followed in 2022. Her forthcoming album explores the art of the duo and the use of vocal layering as a production tool in this intimate setting.
One of Alexa’s most important collaborations has been with her husband, four-time Grammy winning drummer, Antonio Sanchez (composer for the Oscar winning film Birdman and drummer with Pat Metheny for 20 years). Together they have recorded seven albums together and were most recently commissioned to compose an original score for “Existencia”, a piece written for voice, drums and physical movement that unpacks the impacts of natural disaster, devastation, human resilience, and community rebuilding.
During the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, Alexa made headlines as a co-founder of what Rolling Stone called the first “virtual jazz festival” and fundraising initiative of the pandemic, Live From Our Living Rooms, which contracted over 120 artists, raised over $140k, and helped facilitate grants to over 100 US based musicians in need.
Post pandemic, Alexa co-founded and is the artistic director of the Ponta Lopud Jazz Festival in Croatia, which stands as a beacon for the elevation of young professional musicians from the region, a creative haven for internationally touring performing artists, and introduces Croatian audiences to new and innovative music that is pushing musical and socio-political boundaries.
Resonance
Thana Alexa is a Croatian-American vocalist, composer and producer who blends elements of jazz, world music and electronic soundscapes, placing importance on social activism, mental health awareness & uplifting female voices.
Artist Bio“Resonance” is a song cycle that explores how the reverberation of sound frequencies can awaken emotional states, trigger physiological reactions on a molecular level and affect mental health. Each song is composed using unique frequencies that are meant to emulate specific emotions, and the lyrics and melodies tell the stories of life experiences that communicate what those emotions are. The compositions combine layered vocal harmonies – including Croatian traditional singing – electronic soundscapes, and elements of jazz mixed with Balkan harmonic and rhythmic structures.
Listening to and making music is known to heal minds and bodies riddled with trauma. Sound itself can ignite creativity and inspiration through reverberation and resonance within the body. The album’s purpose is to take Alexa and the listener on a journey in search of restorative behavior, creative awakening, and self-acceptance of individual truth to aid us in the practice of mindfulness and allowing space and time for healing to occur.
“Resonance” examines the ways in which the recorded and live versions of sound can heal in different ways. The pandemic taught us that live music is a human experience that cannot be replicated with any other. It is a shared, cyclical energy that is generated between audience members and performing musicians in a physical space, and that exchange of human energy is unique to each individual performance. In the live production of this song cycle, audience members will be invited to sing designated parts and improvise using their bodies to create sounds so that each audience can dictate how the physical space affects both performer and audience engagement.