Alice Zawadzki, Fred Thomas, Misha Mullov-Abbado

CD version. Za Górami is the first album by the trio of singer and violinist Alice Zawadzki, pianist Fred Thomas and double bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado. All three are London musicians with a classical training and long experience in jazz and improvisation. Their material is folk song from Argentina, Venezuela, France, Poland and, for about half the programme, the Ladino repertoire of the Sephardic Jews. They treat it as chamber music, with open, unhurried interplay and arrangements that leave much of the space empty.

Zawadzki sings and plays violin, Mullov-Abbado plays double bass, and Thomas moves between piano, drums and the vielle, a medieval bowed instrument, here one built by the Italian luthier Fabio Galgani. Thomas had already appeared on ECM with Three Or One, his Bach transcriptions, and in Elina Duni's group; for Mullov-Abbado this is a first ECM recording. The three arranged everything together. The album was recorded in June 2023 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, with Stefano Amerio as engineer, and produced by Manfred Eicher. The title, a Polish phrase meaning "behind the mountains", is also the way a fairy tale begins, much like "once upon a time".

The Ladino songs set the tone: Los Bilbilikos, where Thomas bows the vielle behind Zawadzki's violin, plucked like an oud, the lullaby Nani Nani, and the closing Arvoles Lloran por Lluvias. Between them come Gustavo Santaolalla's Suéltate las Cintas, set sparely over a heartbeat bass line, and Simón Díaz's Venezuelan Tonada De Luna Llena. Je Suis Trop Jeunette starts from a Renaissance chanson by Nicolas Gombert and uses prepared piano in the upper register, a colour that carries into the title track. There Zawadzki announces the Polish song before a repeated descending figure from bass and piano, and the music thins into contemplation as her voice grows more urgent. Thomas also contributes Gentle Lady, a setting of a James Joyce poem.

The press response in Britain was strong. John Fordham chose it as jazz album of the month in The Guardian, hearing "beautifully conveyed wistful songs, but only exploratory and jazz-immersed musicians could have delivered them this way". Jazzwise made it an Editor's Choice, and Richard Williams, on his blog The Blue Moment, called it "one of the year's outstanding albums". Phil Johnson in London Jazz News found the project unbendingly serious in tone. He still praised the clear, transparent sound and Zawadzki's range across several languages.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2810, first released on 13 September 2024, with a cover painting by Emmanuel Barcilon and notes by the three musicians.