Alice Zawadzki

Alice Zawadzki is a London-based vocalist, violinist, songwriter and composer. She works as a performer, collaborator, composer and speaker, and her music moves between jazz, folk, improvisation and other traditions. She is Anglo-Polish and draws on an early exposure to New Orleans jazz and gospel, along with classical violin training and an ongoing interest in poetry and folk music from diverse sources.

Career and performance

As a teenager, Zawadzki tours and studies with the New Orleans singer Lillian Boutté, who takes her under her wing. She later performs widely as both a solo artist and a collaborator, appearing at venues and festivals including the Royal Albert Hall, Ronnie Scott’s, the London Jazz Festival, the Vortex and Celtic Connections. Her international performances include appearances at Taipei International Jazz Festival, Coventry Calling in Massachusetts, Südtirol Jazz Festival in Italy, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival in Canada and Música Impopular in Brazil.

She also appears in underground London venues and on other unconventional platforms, and she focuses on community music making and music at grassroots level.

Recordings and recognition

Her debut solo album, China Lane, is released on Whirlwind Recordings in 2014. It contains original songs and arrangements shaped by modern, ancient and invented folklore. The album receives strong critical attention, including BBC Radio 3’s Album of the Week, and appears in The Guardian’s end-of-year best albums list. Jamie Cullum describes it favourably and invites her and her band to perform live on BBC Radio 2 at Maida Vale. The album’s reception leads to nominations for British Vocalist of the Year from Jazz FM and the Parliamentary Jazz Awards in 2015 and 2017, with additional Jazz FM and Parliamentary Jazz Awards nominations in 2018 and 2015 respectively.

She is selected for Take Five, the professional development programme run by Serious Ltd and supported by the Performing Rights Society and Arts Council England. She also receives the PRSF Women Make Music Award, which supports her release Within You Is A World Of Spring. That project features Rob Luft, Misha Mullov-Abbado, Fred Thomas, Hyelim Kim and the Amika string quartet.

Collaborations, premieres and broadcast work

Zawadzki premieres several large-scale works, including Daniel Cohens’ Reciprocity at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Alex Roth’s Arvoles Lloran Por Luvia at Battersea Music Hall, Alya Al-Sultani’s Two Sisters: An Arabic Opera at the Ahbab Festival in Cambridge, and Peter Wiegold’s Third Orchestra at the Barbican. She also performs Louis Andriessen’s M is for Man, Music and Mozart with Sinfonia Viva at Nottingham Symphony Hall.

She appears frequently on live BBC Radio in connection with the London Jazz Festival, the BBC New Generation Artists programme and other broadcasts, and also speaks on vocal practices for BBC Radio 3 programmes.

Film, television and orchestral work

Her voice appears on film and television scores including Disney’s African Cats, composed by Nicholas Hooper, and Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror for the BBC. She also performs as vocal soloist with the Prague Philharmonic on George Fenton’s Planet Earth Live in Concert arena tour in Germany. In addition, she performs the vocal and fiddle solo parts in live performances of James Horner’s score for Titanic with orchestras including the Kansai Philharmonic, Osaka Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic, Moscow City Symphony Orchestra and the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra.

Training

Zawadzki studies jazz singing and composition and gains an MA from the Royal Academy of Music with a scholarship from the Musicians Benevolent Fund. Before that, she studies classical violin at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she wins the Hilda Collens Prize and the Cove Park Emerging Artists Residency, supported by the Jerwood Foundation and the Scottish Arts Council.

Labels and recordings as collaborator

She appears on recordings for Whirlwind Recordings, Babel, Chaos, Odradek, Boombetter Records and Ubiquity Records, including What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes? – The Moss Project, Impossible Things by Corrie Dick, Lela by Dan Wieldhion, Lifecycles by Engines Orchestra and The Myth of the Golden Ratio by United Vibrations. Her work also receives regular play on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3, Jazz FM and Resonance FM, including live sessions with her solo project and appearances on Jazz FM.