Kristyna Myles is a 24 year old singer/songwriter based in Manchester who is already being described as one of the hottest singer-songwriter properties in Britain today.
Kristyna's story starts on the streets on Manchester. While studying at Salford University Kristyna and her friend, guitarist Ben Williams, often used to busk in Manchester city center to make a little extra money. In September 2005 they were spotted performing by a journalist from the Manchester Evening News who arranged for her to be contacted by BBC Radio 5 Live who in turn asked her to represent Manchester in a national busking competition. Kristyna and Ben went on to compete against representatives from all the other major urban centers in the UK including London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Cardiff, Birmingham and Edinburgh and promptly won the competition for the Best Live Buskers in Britain in a nationwide audience vote.
Fate now took a hand. A little over a month after the competition Kristyna was again noticed busking on Manchester's Market Street, this time by none other than Chris de Burgh, a recording artist with over 40 million albums sales to his credit who just happened to be passing..
Two months later Kristyna's new manager Perry Hughes sent a copy of Kristyna's most recent demos to Chris following a conversation in which Perry had just mentioned her in passing as a new act he was working with. When he heard the demos Chris realized that this was none other than the young singer he had heard on Market Street more than two months previously! The rest, as they say, is history and Chris immediately asked her to duet with him on his new album The Storyman. Kristyna recorded the duet, called Raging Storm, at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London, using one of the very same studios once used by The Beatles..
Hard on the heels of recording with Chris, Kristyna was invited to perform with her band The Truetones at the Big Issue Unplugged concert at the Shepherds Bush Empire on September 23rd in celebration of the magazine's 15th birthday. She performed one of her own songs, called 'My Lord', (and was interviewed by Aled Jones) on BBC1's Songs of Praise in October (a performance due to be repeated on a BBC 1 “Best of Songs of Praise” on August 19th). Kristyna performed Raging Storm live on stage with Chris at the Birmingham NEC and during his eleven date European tour in November 2006 and has also performed at the famous “In The City” music conference in Manchester.
Kristyna sang with Chris de Burgh on Uktv's Wogan: Now and Then and appeared on prime time UK tv again in March 2007 when she performed with Chris de Burgh and Aled Jones in a episode of the BBC 1 series “Play It Again”. Kristyna again toured Europe with Chris de Burgh on an 18 date tour in July & August 2007 and appeared at Manchester, Glasgow, London and Bournmouth during the UK leg of the tour.
Kristyna's music can best be described as a bang up to date fusion of traditional jazz sensibilities and modern singer songwriter nuances, something at the same totally new and yet also subtly familiar to the ear..
Chris de Burgh's latest album The Story Man was released in October 2006 and includes Raging Storm which was released as a single on March 12th in both the UK and in Germany. She has also recorded a duet called Making Movies with jazz singer / songwriter Rick Guard which will appear on Rick's album next entitled Anyone But Me.
Kristyna has a 1st class B.A. Honours degree in Popular Music and Recording from Salford University. She plays piano and flute. Her music has been described as “soulful and distinctive” by the Manchester Evening News and has been played on both BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 5 Live..