Junction Tales

Delicately and expertly bridging the musical worlds of jazz, classical and folk, acclaimed violinist, composer and singer Alice Zawadzki presents a unique exploration of musical junctions through the stories of folklore, alongside a band of rare talents for our final concert night of this year’s programme. Commissioned especially for the festival, ‘Invented Folklore’ sees the Jazz FM Awards 2025 ‘Vocalist of the Year’ shortlist nominee inviting a stellar line-up of musicians including saxophonist and BBC Young Jazz Musician 2018 Xhosa Cole, the brilliant drummer Jon Scott (GoGo Penguin, Mulatu Astatke), and boundary blurring artist Simon Roth, who in the spirit of invention, brings a completely new and unique instrument of his own making, The Magic Box, which has to be heard to be believed.

 

Curated and performed by Alice Zawadzki, ‘Invented Folklore’ brings us vignettes that re-imagine the world of the fairy tale, crashing into the Pump House Theatre for one very special night. The Wolf of Watford sits alongside Goldilocks and the Three Hipsters, whilst the Sleeping Beauty of Berkhamsted dreams of the Ugly Duckling of Boreham Wood. Baba Yaga of Potter's Bar looks on and wonders when the bar will reopen. From the absurd to the blissful, the silly to the sublime, suburbaners expect your stories to be immortalised forever! An evening that promises to bring the personal and the mythic together with extraordinary musical accompaniment.

 

Equally intriguing support will be from progressive tap dancer Petra Haller and Leeds pianist Tom O'Brien as they explore the improvisational boundaries of a dance form that has been present in the history of jazz since its inception. Petra, a London-based tap dancer, musician, and bandleader, has redefined tap as a key element in jazz and improvisational music, transforming the art of tap into a percussive voice, adding a unique layer of rhythm and texture to her collaborations. The pair will be performing jazz standards as well as elements of free improvisation, rhythm and melody coming together in an engaging and dynamic performance to present a 21st Century take on tap dancing. Whether you're a seasoned jazz listener or simply curious, this collaboration will be both surprising and enriching.

 

More about Alice

 

“She is a genuine original.” John Fordham, The Guardian

 

Born in 1985 to an English linguist mother, and Polish historian father, Alice is one of six children who grew up in the historic market town of Abingdon in Oxfordshire. Taking classical violin studies from an early age, Alice went on to tour with the legendary New Orleans singer Lillian Boutté whilst still a teenager. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in classical violin at the Royal Northern College of Music (winning the Hilda Collens Prize and the Cove Park Emerging Artists Residency), she trained for and gained her Master’s in jazz singing and composition at the Royal Academy of Music.

 

Alice’s debut album, ‘China Lane’, arrived in 2014 on Whirlwind Recordings, her highly distinctive blending of traditional, contemporary, and imagined folk music bringing her significant acclaim including from The Guardian and Jamie Cullum. A new and unique artist had arrived. In 2015, Alice released a duo album, ‘Lela’ with pianist Dan Whieldon, a mix of originals and standards that included pieces by Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and Handel. She also worked with the Chaos Collective and guitarist Fred Moss in his Moss Project. In 2017, she composed music for a festival in South Korea with Korean taegum player Hyelim Kim, which she also performed in London.

 

Alice’s second album ‘Within You Is a World of Spring’ was released in 2019, its eight original songs about nature and human resilience inspiring an avalanche of great reviews, gaining her four stars in MOJO, Jazzwise, The Guardian, and inspiring DownBeat Magazine to describe the record as "Capturing a sense of Gaia's wisdom... Zawadzki's compositions are hued with mystique and eclecticism."

 

In 2022, Alice was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) and also took the reins as a journalist and broadcaster, her first documentary for the BBC, ‘Yiddish Glory’, a fascinating tale of her journey to track down a collection of previously thought ‘lost’ songs in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC World Service.

 

Alice was made an Associate of the Royal Northern College of Music (ARNCM) in 2023 in recognition of her contributions to music.

 

With a mesmerising interweaving of folk song, chamber music, improvisation and acoustic jazz, 2024’s ‘Za Górami’ album was Alice’s first record for the iconic German label ECM. Alongside long-term collaborators Fred Thomas and bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado (who will be joining Alice at WJJ), the trio explored compositions from European, Latin American and Sephardic Jewish sources, including songs sung in Ladino and Polish, and was produced by label co-founder Manfred Eicher himself.

 

Enjoying recognition as a singer from both the classical and jazz worlds, Alice received a nomination for Singer of the Year from the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2024, alongside several nominations as British Singer of the Year from both the Jazz FM Awards and the Parliamentary Jazz Awards. She has also lent her vocal talents to an array of film, TV,  theatre and symphonic projects, performing across the globe at many of the world’s finest festivals and venues, including the Royal Albert Hall, Ronnie Scott’s, the London Jazz Festival, the Sűdtirol Jazz Festival in Italy and further afield in Taiwan, Brazil and Argentina.

 

Main act line-up

Alice Zawadzki – vocals and violin

Xhosa Cole – saxophone

Jon Scott – drums

Simon Roth – 'Magic Box'

Misha Mullov-Abbado – double bass

tbc – harmonica

tbc – guitar/piano

 

More about Petra

 

Hailing from the Bavarian capital Munich, Petra studied dance at Tanzprojekt München and at Escola Luthier in Barcelona before settling in London. She began her career working as a freelance dancer on the BBC and various other projects before exploring her own artistry as a creator and dancer, producing a number of solo and interdisciplinary shows in Berlin and London. She went on to study tap under Jason Samuels Smith and Derick Grant, who introduced Petra to the historical weight of the artform and its roots in the Afro-American jazz story. After discovering the heightened thrills of improvisation at the ‘Freedom of Improvisation Loft’ jam at The Vortex led by Cleveland Watkiss and our own Orphy Robinson amongst others, Petra had found herself.

 

In 2020, Petra became the first tap dancer named in Jazzwise Magazine’s ‘Rising Jazz Artists: Who to look out for’ list, deserved recognition for an artist courageously bringing the form back to where it belongs: in the jazz and improvisational worlds. She was also mentioned in the Reader's Digest’s ‘10 Female Jazz Musicians you need to know’. In 2023, she teamed up with the Australian musician and composer Meg Morley for their self-released ‘Shoulders I Stand On’ album, an extraordinary suite of improvised and composed music.

 

Petra has also performed with artists including Cleveland Watkiss, Xhosa Cole, Mark Sanders, Loz Speyer, Olly Chalk, Richard Lewis and more. Harnessing experimentalist impulses with a deep commitment to the traditions and lineage of the dance form makes Petra an exciting and audacious talent we can’t wait to share with you.