Misha has collaborated with British / Polish singer Alice Zawadzki and multi-instrumentalist Fred Thomas in this trio for several years. Their long-awaited album Za Górami was released on ECM Records in September 2024 and was The Guardian's Jazz Album of the Month.

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Za Górami

 

Vocalist and violinist Alice Zawadzki, pianist Fred Thomas (who also plays the vielle and drums here) and bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado present a rare alchemy on their trio debut, fusing folk idioms from a multitude of sources with free flowing interplay and fluid structures. Inhabiting their own stylistic realm, the trio encompasses folk song, chamber music, improvisation and acoustic jazz, and on Za Górami they present the full span of their reach in a mesmerizing whole. Ladino traditionals are heard alongside striking renditions of Gustavo Santaolalla’s “Suéltate Las Cintas” and Simón Díaz’s “Tonada De Luna Llena”. The title-lending Polish traditional “Za Górami” is performed in a poignant interpretation by Zawadzki and the Renaissance piece “Je Suis Trop Jeunette” finds a kindred spirit in Fred Thomas’s monody-inspired setting of James Joyce’s in “Gentle Lady”. The album was recorded at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano and produced by Manfred Eicher.​​

 

Singer, violinist, and composer Alice Zawadzki was born in 1985 to an English linguist mother, and Polish historian father, and is one of six children. “Loosely connected to the world of jazz, but realistically inhabiting her own realm” (Clash Magazine), her creative output is an intricate tapestry of influences and exploration, finding home in the peripheries of the contemporary classical, jazz, art-pop, and folk worlds – “all propelled with a voice of velvet suppleness and gutsy emotional intensity” (The Arts Desk).

 

Fred Thomas is one of London’s most sought after multi-instrumentalists and composer/arrangers, known for his breadth of musical styles as well as for specialising in creative re-interpretations of J.S. Bach. Having started to play classical piano at the age of five, Thomas went on to study jazz piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, where he developed an interest in rhythmic cultures from Africa and Latin America, free improvisation, contemporary classical, improvised counterpoint and Baroque music, in particular Bach. He works regularly as Musical Director with the National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe and teaches at Trinity Laban Conservatoire.

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