Some albums are planned. Some are demanded — by grief, by love, by the kind of loss that leaves a silence so wide you have no choice but to fill it with the only thing you know.
“For The Hawk” is the new release from Citovitz and The Fireflies of February — the recording project of Polish-born guitarist, composer, and songwriter Andrzej Citowicz, based in Cairo, Egypt. It is available now on all major streaming platforms worldwide. And it arrives on a date that was never truly a coincidence. The official lyric video for ‘I Don’t Have To Hide’ — released also today with the album premiere, May 4th — is available now on YouTube:
May 4th. Star Wars Day. The day the world celebrates the Light Side of the Force.
He was always Light Side. Not once. Not ever, did he choose anything else.
THE HAWK
His name is not printed here. Those who knew him need no introduction. Those who didn’t will understand everything they need to know from the music itself.
He was a friend. A mentor. A father figure to both Andrzej and his wife Shereen Shoukry Citowicz. He stood quietly in the background for years — never asking for recognition, never needing applause — and made everything around him better simply by being present. He was the kind of person who would die for the people he loved without hesitation, and never once mention it afterward. The kind of person the world produces rarely and loses too soon.
He was also a devoted Star Wars fan. A Light Side soul in every sense of that phrase — not as metaphor, but as lived practice. He chose good not because it was easy or rewarded or noticed, but because that was simply who he was.
“He stood in the background so we could stand at all. He never asked for anything. He gave everything. Love was not something he spoke about — it was something he did. Every single day.” — Andrzej Citowicz
When he was gone, Andrzej and Shereen faced what so many have faced before them — the impossible task of responding to an absence that language cannot adequately address. They did what they have always done. They turned to music.
A BLESSING, A CURSE, AND THE WEIGHT OF FRIENDSHIP
For The Hawk did not begin as an album. It began as a song — Love Is All We Need — written in the spirit of Bon Jovi, warm and wide open and completely unapologetic in its belief that love is the hardest, strongest, most load-bearing thing a human being can carry. Shereen wrote the lyrics as a tribute. As his message, returned to the world in the only form she and Andrzej knew how to give it.
Then the grief kept arriving. And the songs kept coming with it.
This Is One’s For the Hawk. We Are The Good Guys. I Don’t Have To Hide. Love Is All We Need. Each track arrived from the same source — the specific, irreplaceable ache of losing someone who shaped you. Someone whose guidance you did not fully appreciate until the guidance was no longer there. Someone whose friendship was so present, so reliable, so quietly foundational, that you only began to understand its full weight when it was no longer something you could reach for.
“Music is all I can give back. If there is any paying back for his love, his friendship, his heart held out for both of us — for me and for Shereen — then this is it. Every note. Every lyric. Every song on this record.” — Andrzej Citowicz
“For The Hawk” is not a grief project. It is a friendship project. It is a record about the people who stand in the background and hold everything together — unseen, unrewarded, irreplaceable. About the loyalty that does not announce itself. About the loss that does not diminish but deepens everything it touches.
Andrzej and Shereen have faced much in recent years. Loss upon loss. The kind of accumulation that would silence many artists. Instead, it has done the opposite — driving both of them deeper into the work, further into the honesty that has always defined Citovitz and The Fireflies of February at their best.
MAY THE 4TH BE WITH HIM
The choice of May 4th as the release date arrived with the particular logic of things that feel inevitable in retrospect. Star Wars Day. The day the galaxy celebrates the Light Side. The Jedi. The ones who chose good because it was right, not because it was easy — who stood in the fire and did not become it.
He was exactly that.
“I told myself it was coincidence. I know now that it was not. He was always Light Side. This was always his day.” — Andrzej Citowicz
On the day of the album’s premiere, a special official lyrics video was released for I Don’t Have To Hide — one of the most intimate tracks on the record. A song about the freedom that comes from being fully known and fully accepted by another person. The kind of freedom H gave to everyone around him, simply by being who he was.
THE MUSIC: CITOWICZ WITH GUITAR IN HAND
Musically, For The Hawk is unmistakably Andrzej Citowicz. The guitar is first. It is always first. Modern technology surrounds it — the home studio in Cairo, the production, the arrangements — but the heart of every track beats with the same pulse it always has: a guitarist who grew up in Wałbrzych, Poland, absorbing Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Desmond Child, and the great power ballad tradition of the late 1980s and early 1990s as if his life depended on it.
Because in some ways, it did.
That DNA runs through every track on this album — the melodic hooks, the emotional guitar work, the cinematic arrangements that make vulnerability feel enormous rather than small. Phil Collen’s harmonized leads. The Bon Jovi warmth that turns a love song into a declaration. The Def Leppard wall of sound that makes a chorus feel like the world opening up.
But For The Hawk is not nostalgia. It is a man with a guitar and fifty years of scars, writing songs for someone who mattered, in the only musical language that has ever felt completely honest to him.
“The guitar is always first. Modern technology helps me build what I hear. But what I hear — I have been hearing since the early 90s. That has never changed. And with this album, more than any before it, I did not want it to change.” — Andrzej Citowicz
SHEREEN: THE LYRICAL SOUL
Shereen Shoukry Citowicz is not a supporting presence on this record. She is one of its two central voices. Her lyrics — on Love Is All We Need and throughout the album’s emotional architecture — carry the particular honesty of someone who has processed grief not as a subject but as a lived experience, and found a way to transform it into something that reaches far beyond the personal.
After nearly 18 years of marriage, Andrzej and Shereen have built a creative partnership that continues to deepen and surprise. She gives him words he could not find alone. He gives her music that carries those words further than either of them could go separately. For The Hawk is their most unified and most personal collaboration to date.
“Without her — there would be nothing. Not the music. Not the courage to finish it. Not the reason to begin again every time the silence got too heavy. She is not just the person I come home to. She is the reason the guitar sounds the way it does.” — Andrzej Citowicz
AVAILABLE NOW
For The Hawk is available now on all major streaming platforms worldwide. The official lyric video for ‘I Don’t Have To Hide’ — released on the day of the album premiere, May 4th, 2026 — is available now on YouTube.
Youtube link: https://youtu.be/id41xCN6u8Y?si=KxZJTsx1GD8yoU6l
This is independent music in the truest sense. No label. No industry machine. Just a home studio in Cairo, a guitar, a marriage built partly on music, and the memory of a man who deserved to be honoured in the only way Andrzej and Shereen know how.
“May the Force be with him. It always was. Light Side. Forever.” — Andrzej Citowicz
TRACK CREDITS
Music & Guitars: Andrzej Citowicz
Lyrics: Andrzej Citowicz / Shereen Shoukry Citowicz
Recorded & Arranged: 2026
Premiere Lyrics Video: I Don’t Have To Hide — May 4th, 2026
Artist: Citovitz and The Fireflies of February
Dedicated to: H — Light Side. Forever. 🦅
STREAM & WATCH
ARTIST CONTACTS & LINKS:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7aIeg5DyI7xwkYLsBgJNWf
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AndrzejCitowicz
Instagram: https://instagram.com/citovitz
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/citovitz/
℗© 2026 Citovitz and The Fireflies of February / Andrzej Citowicz
Click image to watch the video
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