Draft:Alexandr Misko

Alexandr Misko (Александр Мисько) (born 28 November 1997), also known as Alex Misko, is a Russian fingerstyle guitarist and musician. He gained fame thanks to cover versions of famous songs published on YouTube and Facebook. He is now based in Germany.

Early Life
Alexandr Misko was born on 28 November 1997 in Krasnodar, Russia. He started playing guitar at the age of 12, when his parents gave him his first guitar, a classical acoustic guitar. He attended private classical guitar lessons for three years. At the age of 14 he became interested in fingerstyle guitar and started teaching himself after hearing music by the famous Canadian guitarist Don Ross.

Career
In 2015, the attention of the Russian media was attracted by a video, of then 14 year old Alexandr Misko, in which he played the guitar with one hand and taped a desk using a pen in his other hand. The video went viral recieving 500 000 views on YouTube in four days.

In 2016 Misko’s cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" went viral receiving 30 million views on Facebook and by 2024 it had more than 9 million views on YouTube. He published his first album The Songs of Adolescence in 2016.

In 2018, his cover of George Michael's "Careless Whisper" went viral, and received over 80 million views on Facebook and YouTube in under a month. He spoke at TEDxMannheim 2018 (an independent TED conference in Mannheim) with a speach and performance titled “What if you could make one instrument sound like an entire band?” In October 2018 he won "Guitarist of the Year" at the UK Guitar Show (MusicRadar), for which he wrote and performed the composition “Tale of Lost Times”.

Alexandr Misko has performed at venues across Europe, United Kingdom, United States of America and China. His YouTube videos feature collaborations with other artists including Dmitriy Toporov, Pavel Stepanov, Andrea Valerie and Jon Gomm.

In 2020 he shared the Carnegie Hall stage with harpist Alexander Boldachev. The duo also played live at the 2024 Dutch Harp Festival and their song “Crossroads” was used in the official after movie for the festival.