Alice Zawadzki: Within You Is A World Of Spring

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Lucy Nolan (vla)
Fred Thomas (d, b, prepared p)
Misha Mullov-Abbado (b)
Peggy Nolan (clo)
Rob Luft (g)
Alice Zawadzki (v, vn, p, ky)
Laura Senior (vla)
Simmy Singh (vn)
Hyelim Kim (taegum) (vn)

Label:

Whirlwind

October/2019

Media Format:

CD

Catalogue Number:

Recordings

RecordDate:

2019

London-based singer, violinist and pianist Alice Zawadzki gifts us a second album both tender in spirit and defiantly anti-genre, hooking her all-embracing vision to a questing musical curiosity and the freedom inherent in jazz. Ten original, wildly different tunes are buoyed by a band of young London Turks including guitarist Rob Luft and double-bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado, who play, tease and solo their way through the likes of the eponymous opener, in which Zawadzki's clarion voice tells of regeneration and rebirth; a bittersweet, time-bending ballad, ‘Keeper’, and a long psychedelic instrumental suitably titled ‘Twisty Moon’. Standouts are many: more poetry recital than spoken word, ‘The Woods’ is a crisp but warmly annunciated ode to feeling at one with nature, augmented by on-the-fly-melodies from Hyelim Kim on the taegum (a large wooden Japanese flute) and textures gleaned from flourishes on prepared piano (variously sparked by the effects of a handfan on paper tacked to strings). Zawadzki's violin-playing is flowing, fluttering, generous, but it's her jazz-honed vocals that really impress, free-falling through ‘God's Children’, a song she wrote after working in the refugee camps of Calais, and finding new depth and resonance in the Spanish and Italian lyrics of ‘Es Verdad’ and ‘O Mio Amore’. A cornucopia of delights.

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