Alice Zawadzki. Photo credit and © Kat Pfeiffer Photography

Alice Zawadzki Band
(606 Club, 31st January 2017. Photos by Kat Pfeiffer. Report by Sebastian Scotney)

The first time I heard the singing/violin playing/stage-presence phenomenon that is Alice Zawadzki was at the Green Note in 2012, and I don’t regret a single word I wrote HERE. In the interim four-and-a-bit-years she has simply got better and more assured in doing the vast range of things that she does so stupendously well.

One also senses that the work she has done with refugees over the past couple of years has deepened and strengthened her sense of what the true imperatives of life really are. The concentration, the level of conviction and – perhaps above all –  the sheer joy that comes through very eloquently from Kat Pfeiffer’s pictures here is something special.

This review could go on enumerating her musical prowess and power of communication, the range of musical material, the quality of her band, but there was one moment which perhaps sums up that total conviction of this performance: the last note of the slinkily chromatic standard You’ve Changed. Alice Zawadzki’s is the exact opposite of  the shrinking violet/wallflower ending. A high note is hit hard with the support of the full band and then held with a persuasiveness, a tonal focus and a violinist’s secure intonation, that could carry to every seat in the back row of a concert hall. All I can say is Thank You.

L-R: Misha Mullov-Abbado, Alice Zawadzki (playing and singing!). Jon Scott Photo credit and © Kat Pfeiffer Photography

Tim Whitehead, Misha Mullov-Abbado, Alice Zawadzki Photo credit and © Kat Pfeiffer Photography

Alice Zawadzki Photo credit and © Kat Pfeiffer Photography

Phil Peskett Photo credit and © Kat Pfeiffer Photography

Alice Zawadzki Band Photo credit and © Kat Pfeiffer Photography

LINKS: Interview about China Lane
2013 podcast interview about Alice Zawadzki’s musical background