Photograph of the Misha Mullov-Abbado Sextet by Kasia Ociepa

Friday at Wall2Wall Jazz Festival, Melville Centre, Abergavenny, 26/09/2025

The 2025 Wall2Wall Jazz Festival, organised by the Black Mountain Jazz Club in Abergavenny, featured three exceptional headline concerts plus a Community Jazz Day on the Sunday that presented a wide range free of admission live jazz events at various locations around the town, these taking place in a cross section of bars and restaurants and also outside on the streets.

HER FRAME, HER SOUND - PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION

I’ll be taking a look at some of the musical performances in due course, including all of the headline events,  but this was a Festival that featured the sights as well as the sounds of jazz. Running throughout the Festival was the photographic exhibition “Her Frame, Her Sound”,  a collection of photographs of female jazz musicians taken by female photographers.

Friday at Wall2Wall represented a good opportunity for jazz fans to view this touring exhibition with the walls of the Melville Centre adorned with stunning photographic images captured by five exceptional photographers.

This was a truly international collection with the featured photographers including New York based Enid Farber, Vuyo Giba from South Africa, London based photographers Tatiana Gorilovsky and Monika S. Jakubowska and from Wales BMJ’s own resident photographer Kasia Ociepa.

The “Her Frame, Her Sound” exhibition is the brainchild of vocalist and songwriter Fiona Ross, who is also the head of the Women In Jazz Media organisation. Ross performs regularly at London’s leading jazz clubs, several of which have impressive collections of images of famous jazz musicians hanging on their walls. Ross was struck by the fact that female jazz musicians, and particularly female instrumentalists, were rarely featured. It is intended that “Her Frame, Her Sound” will be the start of redressing the balance, as Ross explains;

“It is time for women on the walls! Photography captures incredible moments and gifts us those memories. Yet photographers are rarely credited and women are too often missing from the story. It’s time to change the narrative.”

The photographs in the “Her Frame, Her Sound” exhibition were first officially displayed during the summer of 2025 at an exhibition at the Karamel Jazz Club in Wood Green, north London. In addition to the work of the photographers mentioned above there were also images from the celebrated jazz photographer and author Val Wilmer. All the photographs in the exhibition are available for purchase and those that featured in Wilmer’s portfolio at Karamel have all been sold, hence the absence of any of her work at Abergavenny.

Despite the absence of Wilmer’s work there was still plenty of stunning photographic imagery displayed on the walls of the Melville Centre. Naturally I examined it thoroughly, marvelling at the skills of the women behind the lens.

Each photographer selected ten images to represent their work and I toured the exhibition rigorously, noting what I had seen. I’ll take a look at the work of each photographer in turn. The order in which I consider them merely reflects the route I took around the exhibition and doesn’t indicate a preference for the work of any one exhibitor.

I began with the work of Tatiana Gorilovsky, a photographer of Russian heritage now living and working in London. She has worked as a ‘house photographer for several of London’s most prestigious jazz clubs, among them Ronnie Scott’s, Pizza Express and the 606. Her work also appears in the National Jazz Archive and has been featured both in the specialist jazz press and in the wider national press. She likes to experiment with long exposures and multiple exposures and some of her images were decidedly ‘artistic’, moving beyond mere photographic documentation. In the main her colour photographs represented this aspect of her work and included images of harpist Brandee Younger, saxophonist Hannah Horton and drummer Jas Kayser. There was also an ‘artistic’ monochrome image of vocalist / guitarist Bumi Thomas. Slightly more conventional black and white imagery of live performers included photographs of vocalists Dee Dee Bridgewater and Mica Miller and violinist Yilian Canizares, all of these capturing the live energy of the performers.

Originally from Poland the London based photographer Monika S. Jakubowska acts as the house photographer for both Ronnie Scott’s and Kings Place and her work has also featured in Jazzwise magazine and in the national press, including The Independent, The Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times. I have also been impressed by her work when I have seen her photographs on numerous album sleeves and CD packages. For “Her Frame, Her Sound” all of Jakubowska’s black and white images had been captured at Ronnie Scott’s and featured vocalists Dee Dee Bridgewater, Laura Mvula and Macy Gray, bassist / vocalist Isabella Burnham, violinist / vocalist Alice Zawadzki, pianist Joanna Duda, flautist Ludivine Issamburg and percussionist Bex Burch.

The South African Vuyo Giba specialises in jazz, abstract and lifestyle photography and is particularly interested in documenting and preserving aspects of her South African heritage. Subtitled “Uku Nyungwu Kwa Tyala” Her exhibition portfolio represented an exploration of South African jazz with a particular emphasis on its historical and social ties to the Eastern Cape province. Her monochrome images featured South African musicians exclusively, the majority of them probably unfamiliar to European and North American jazz listeners – I certainly hadn’t heard of any of them.
For the record the musicians featured were vocalists Zoe Masuku, Nirere Chanel and Thandiswa Mazwai, alto saxophonist Neteske Horton and bassist Romy Brautenseth. There were also more general shots of the Hatched Musical Ballet and the Neahtyah Silent Concert. The pride that both Giba and the featured performers took in their shared heritage was unmistakable and the musicians in this collection of images looked significantly different to those in the British and American portfolios as Giba successfully captured the spirit of contemporary South Africa.

Based in New York City Enid Farber is the most experienced exhibitor at “Her Frame, Her Sound” and arguably the ‘biggest name’ amongst the five photographers. She has been a music photographer since 1979 and has photographed such well known musicians as Ray Charles, Bob Marley, Charlie Watts, Diana Ross, Bono and Celia Cruz. She has been the main New York photographer for Jazziz Magazine since 1996 and her work has also been published in Downbeat magazine, plus numerous other publications. Her portfolio at “Her Frame, Her Sound” included a mix of black and white and colour photography. It was the only work to note the time and location that the image was documented. The work included colour images of pianist / vocalist Nina Simone (Hunter College, NYC 1985), pianist Geri Allen (backstage at Carnegie Hall, 1990), saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and vocalist Jazzmeia Horn together (Charlie Parker Jazz Fest, Tompkin Square Park 2019) and harpist Alice Coltrane (Joe’s Pub, NYC, 2002). There were also monochrome images of vocalist Abbey Lincoln (Apollo Theatre, Harlem 2002) plus vocalist Flora Purim and drummer Cindy Blackman Santana, both photographed at the Knitting Factory venue in 1991 and 1997 respectively.

Finally Abergavenny’s own Kasia Ociepa, house photographer of Black Mountain Jazz and a familiar figure at the Melville Centre and around the wider Abergavenny area. Originally from Poland Ociepa moved to the UK in 2006 and originally worked as a garden designer before becoming a professional photographer. She prefers to work in colour and her portfolio of images, all captured at the Melville Centre featured vocalists Debs Hancock, Zoe Gilby, Victoria Klewin and Sarah Brown, saxophonists Alex Clarke and Hannah Horton, violinist / vocalists Claire Victoria Robes and Xenia Porteous, bassist Ursula Harrison and multi-instrumentalist / vocalist Kat Lee Ryan of the band Fabulous Red Diesel. Ociepa’s images represent a celebration of the UK jazz scene as a whole and of Wales in particular.

It must have been difficult for Kasia, and for all the other photographers, to whittle the list down to ten. Further images by Kasia were featured on two ‘pop up posters’ specially created for BMJ that also depicted saxophonist / vocalist Kim Cypher, pianist / vocalist Wendy Kirkland, saxophonist Martha Skilton, vocalist Unnati Dasgupta and tuba player Hanna Mbuya. Other notable female musicians to have played at BMJ / Wall2Wall in recent years include trumpeter Laura Jurd, vocalists Becky Biggins, Ella Hohnen—Ford and Annette Gregory and drummer Sophie Alloway.

JOHN HELLINGS interviews FIONA ROSS and KASIA OCIEPA

Further insights into the “Her Frame, Her Sound” exhibition came when jazz broadcaster John Hellings interviewed both Fiona Ross and Kasia Ociepa. It is intended that these interviews will later be made available to listen to online as part of BMJ’s regular podcast series.

Hellings spoke to Ross first and we learned that Fiona Cullen Ross has both Scottish and Irish heritage and that as a true Celt she was very happy to be bringing the “Her Frame, Her Sound” exhibition to Wales.

Ross was first introduced to music by her parents, an opera loving mother and a father with a taste for blues, rock and jazz, and particularly the music of Louis Armstrong. She first trained as a classical singer but later gravitated towards the less structured world of jazz, “a place for possibility”.

She is now a jazz singer, pianist and songwriter with eight albums to her credit, including the recently released “Moments in My Notebook”, and performs regularly on the London jazz circuit. As a pianist, singer and composer she has now written over one hundred original songs.

Her influences are many and varied and include Oscar Peterson, notably the classic “Night Train” album, a particularly important early source of inspiration. Other influences include Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and the world of musical theatre. Ross continues to take an interest in contemporary jazz developments and cites the Japanese pianist and keyboard player Hiromi as a more recent source of inspiration.

A former journalist Ross founded the Women in Jazz Media organisation in 2020, with the intention of creating more opportunities for women and other minorities within the male dominated jazz industry. The organisation has received international support from female journalists based in Spain and the US and its aim to achieve complete gender neutrality in the jazz community. There may still be some way to go, but personally I think we’re getting there.

Ross talked to Hellings about the practical difficulties of balancing her artistic career with her WIJM work, the latter all being voluntary. She is the curator of the “Her Frame, Her Sound” exhibition which ran for three months at Karamel before coming to Abergavenny.

WIJM have now entered into a partnership with Jazz North and it is intended that the exhibition will visit a number of jazz festivals in the North of England during 2026, although the full touring schedule is yet to be ratified.

The “Her Frame, Her Sound” will be available to view at the Melville Centre until October 4th 2025.

Next Hellings spoke to Kasia Ociepa, who was initially a little reluctant to be interviewed. Like fellow exhibitor Jakubowska she is far more comfortable behind the lens than in front of it. I know the feeling.

But Kasia shone in front of the camera, the interview was also being filmed for the subsequent podcast, and quickly opened up as she told Hellings about a childhood growing up listening to British and American pop music, trying to decipher the lyrics as a way of learning English.

A love of Anglophone music and culture brought Ociepa to Walthamstow, London in 2006. Her love of jazz began when she heard Tony Bennett’s album “The Ultimate American Songbook” and following her move to Wales she began photographing at Black Mountain Jazz in 2019 as a member of the local camera club.

Ociepa was interested in photography from an early age and had always pursued it as a hobby. The lockdown period saw her honing her art and following the pandemic she decided to turn professional, photographing music, events, weddings and portraits, and also for advertisements and branding.

As a music photographer she spoke of trying to capture the joy of the music, the atmosphere of the event and the energy of the performers. The Melville Centre is a little challenging in terms of lighting conditions, a subject that was addressed during a discussion that sometimes got a bit too technical for the majority of the audience, but which was fascinating just the same. It was here that Ociepa’s love for her craft really shone through.

She prefers to shoot in colour, but sometimes uses monochrome, particularly for portrait shoots, and occasionally experiments with overlaying techniques.

Ociepa describes herself as a ‘shy person’ who sometimes suffers from social anxiety but was quick to praise the many friends she has made through her work as a photographer and through Black Mountain jazz in particular.

When prompted by Hellings to recount a favourite BMJ moment she cited a performance by the South Wales based gypsy jazz combo Hot Club Gallois when violinist Xenia Porteous vacated the stage to dance the tango with a member of the audience.

Ociepa recalled that when she was first approached by Ross to be part of the Karamel exhibition she first sought the approval of BMJ organisers Mike Skilton and Debs Hancock, who immediately gave her the ‘thumbs up’.

Kasia described how being a part of the exhibition alongside such illustrious photographic names as Wilmer, Farber and her compatriot Jakubowska had boosted her confidence, both in herself and her work.

There’s no doubt that being part of “Her Frame, Her Sound” has been highly beneficial for both Kasia Ociepa and for Black Mountain Jazz.

Congratulations to Fiona Ross and Kasia Ociepa for their illuminating interviews and to John Hellings, whose understated but subtly incisive style of questioning encouraged both participants to open up in a very natural manner.

I already know Kasia from my regular visits to BMJ but it was also a delight to make the acquaintance of Fiona Ross and to find out that she was already familiar with, and pleasingly approving of, my work. We got on like the proverbial ‘house on fire’ as we chatted amiably about all things jazz as she showed me around the exhibition prior to the interview, giving me some invaluable insights into the photographs on display.

I was hugely impressed with the exhibition itself and my only caveat was that for jazz nerds like me it would have been nice to have known the locations and dates of all the photographs in the exhibition. Only Farber’s work carried this information.

But as Ross explained to Hellings so much photography goes uncredited altogether and it really is time that this matter is properly addressed, with professional photographers receiving the appropriate credit and remuneration that they deserve.

DEBS HANCOCK / NEWMAN TAI DUO

Hellings’ interview with Ross and Ociepa was bookended by two short sets from the duo of vocalist Debs Hancock and pianist Newman Tai.

Hancock is one of BMJ’s key organisers and was acting as MC for this evening’s events. She is also a highly accomplished and highly popular jazz vocalist who performs regularly at venues across South Wales and the Borders.

She was joined tonight by the talented young pianist Newman Tai, originally from Hong Kong but now based in Cardiff. He sounded great on the Melville’s upright acoustic as he accompanied Hancock on the opening “Devil May Care”, a song that has been in the vocalist’s repertoire for some time.

Next we heard an effective slowed down arrangement in B Flat of the Joao Gilberto song “Estate”, with Hancock singing a translated version of the Italian language lyric.

The first set concluded with a playful rendition of  “After You Get What You Want, You Don’t Want It”, a song originally performed by Marilyn Monroe that was introduced to Hancock by the British vocalists Sara Dowling. 

Set two began with the Gigi Gryce / John Hendricks song “Social Call”, which included a scat vocal episode from Hancock and a piano solo from Tai.

Hancock has studied with pianist / vocalist Lianne Carroll who introduced her to the song “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most”, written by pianist Tommy Wolf and lyricist Fran Landesman. Landesman’s celebrated lyrics were particularly effective on another slowed down arrangement featuring the assured singing and playing of Hancock and Tai.

Finally we heard “Some Other Time”, written by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden. The song was recorded by Tony Bennett and Bill Evans, providing a neat link with Kasia’s interview. Hancock had fun with this, adding her own improvised lyrics name-checking the ongoing Festival and its photographic exhibition.

All this represented a very nice curtain raiser for the main musical event of the evening, the performance by an all star London based sextet led by the bassist and composer Misha Mullov-Abbado.

MISHA MULLOV-ABBADO SEXTET

Misha Mullov-Abbado – double bass, Adam Chatterton – trumpet, flugelhorn, George Crowley – tenor sax, Tom Smith – alto sax, Liam Dunachie – piano, Jay Davis – drums

London based bassist and composer Misha Mullov-Abbado has been a regular presence on the Jazzmann web pages since 2015 and the release of his debut album “New Ansonia” on Edition Records. I have since covered Cross-Platform Interchange (2017) and “Effra” (2025). “Dream Circus” (2020), somehow slipped through the reviewing net.

I have also reviewed a number of live performances featuring Mullov-Abbado including a recent appearance at Cheltenham Music Festival by Songs For The Earth”, a jazz / folk / classical crossover project featuring Mullov-Abbado and his wife, violinist Bridget O’Donnell.

All four of Mullov-Abbado’s releases under his own name feature a core sextet of Dunachie (piano), James Davison – trumpet & flugelhorn, Matthew Herd – alto & tenor saxophones, Sam Rapley – tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, and Scott Chapman – drums.

I particularly enjoyed the sextet’s latest release “Effra” and was very much looking forward to seeing the music performed live. The Abergavenny date, part of a wider national tour, saw a number of personnel changes, but with the presence of musicians of the calibre of Crowley, Smith and Davis in the line-up there was hardly likely to be a fall off in terms in quality. All three of these have featured regularly on these web pages, while Chatterton has previously worked with Mullov-Abbado as part of the Patchwork Jazz Orchestra.

Tonight’s version of the sextet delivered a brilliant performance of all original music by the bassist / leader that was unmistakably jazz, but which also borrowed from other musical genres, some of the melodies drawing inspiration from folk, the tightness of some of the arrangements from the discipline of classical music – Misha’s parents are the classical violinist Viktoria Mullova and the conductor Claudio Abbado.

Tonight was Mullov-Abbado’s second visit to Wall2Wall following a previous appearance in 2017 when he was part of a project celebrating the centenary of the release in 1917 of  “Livery Stable Blues” by the Original Dixieland Jass Band,  generally considered to be the first ever jazz recording. 1917 also represented the birth date of three of the giants of the music, vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and pianist/composer Thelonious Monk and these were all celebrated too. Mullov-Abbado was part of a ‘house trio’ led by pianist Dunachie, who had played organ with trombonist Dennis Rollins’ Velocity Trio the previous year.

The “Effra” album takes its name from the Brixton area of South London, where Mullov-Abbado has resided for the last ten years and its tunes take inspiration from the locality and from London as a whole.

Tonight’s performance kicked off with “Traintracker”, the opening track on the “Effra” album and a piece with a title that acknowledges Mullov-Abbado’s self acknowledged ‘railway nerd’ status. A surging theme featuring the interplay of the three horns was allied to a bustling groove suggestive of the rhythms of London’s rail network. Dunachie took the first solo, followed by Smith’s powerful and probing excursion on alto. The leader prompted Davis, playing his first gig for the band, to deliver a carefully constructed solo drum passage in the style of Chapman’s feature on the recording. The full band then returned for a rousing outro, the horns exchanging ideas with Davis, as this piece followed a similar trajectory to the recording.

Mullov-Abbado went right back to his debut album for “Circle Song” (another London Underground reference perhaps?), introduced by Dunachie at the piano. The leader’s bass joined, playing the main melodic theme and entering into a dialogue with Dunachie that developed into an extended piano / double bass duet. This was a gentler piece featuring lilting folk like melodies and the softer sounds of the horns, with Chatterton switching to flugel and sharing the horn solos with the experienced and versatile George Crowley.

Returning to “Effra” the gently swinging ballad “Bridge” was a dedication to the leader’s wife and featured the interplay of Chatterton’s flugel and Crowley’s warm toned tenor as Davis deployed brushes. This time the performance differed from the recording with Dunachie taking the first solo, followed by Smith on alto, with Davis switching to sticks as the momentum of the music increased.

“Equinox” was sourced from the “Dream Circus” album and was performed tonight in recognition of the recent Autumn Equinox. Mullov-Abbado looked on approvingly as the piece was ushered in by a horn chorale featuring flugel, alto and tenor. With Davis subsequently deploying mallets the piece exhibited something of the warm melancholy of Autumn with its rich textures and unhurried rhythms. The leader’s melodic double bass solo combined an expressive beauty with great technical facility while Chatterton’s flugel solo was sometimes reminiscent of the late, great Kenny Wheeler, particularly when underscored by Crowley and Smith’s beguiling sax harmonies. The momentum of the music built during the course of Chatterton’s solo, only to fall away again during an atmospheric closing section featuring Dunachie’s delicate pianism and Davis’ return to the mallets after graduating to sticks. A version of this tune was also played by the Songs For The Earth ensemble at Cheltenham.

From “Effra” Mullov-Abbado’s composition “Subsonic Glow” is a contrafact of the jazz standard “When Lights Are Low” and represents his attempt to write “a straight-ahead swinging number”. Introduced by Davis at the drums and featuring the bright interplay of trumpet, tenor and alto this piece certainly delivered on its remit with drummer Davis featuring alongside a buccaneering trumpet solo from Chatterton and a high energy tenor sax solo from Crowley. The leader was also featured on double bass and the piece ended with a rousing ‘mini big band’ section, Chatterton, Crowley and Smith, just like Davison Rapley and Herd, really are capable of generating that sort of impressive collective power, something that was also noted by other audience members.

A lengthy, value for money set featuring five expansive compositions was warmly received by an appreciative audience and the second set was to deliver more of the same.

Set two commenced with another swinger, “Lock, Stock and Shuffle”, a composition dating back to Mullov-Abbado’s debut. Chatterton continued on trumpet on a piece inspired by the classic Blue Note hard bop sound of the 1950s / 60s. The featured soloists were Smith on alto, Dunachie at the piano and Davis at the drum kit.

The introduction to “Rose”, a track from the recent “Effra” recording slowed things down once more. Dunachie’s repeated single note at the piano started things off, augmented first by Davis’ cymbal shimmers and then by gentle unison horn melodies. Mullov-Abbado emerged as the first soloist, his playing highly dexterous and richly melodic. He was followed by Dunachie at the piano, liberated from his time keeping role with a flowingly lyrical solo. Davis transitioned from brushes to sticks as the music began to gather momentum, distinguished by some dazzling interplay between the horns.

From the “Dream Circus” album the near twelve minute epic “Seven Colours” began with the sound of unaccompanied double bass, with Mullov-Abbado deploying the body of his instrument as a form of percussion. Dunachie sat out as the horns first developed the theme before diverging into a more loosely structured ‘free jazz’ interlude. Smith’s alto was featured in a duo episode with the leader’s bass, the rest of the band eventually joining in as Smith embarked on a marathon alto solo, his increasingly forceful playing propelled by Davis’ increasingly dynamic drumming. As a composer Mullov-Abbado’s control of dynamics was impressive throughout, with this piece eventually drawing to a quiet conclusion.

From the “Effra” recording “Nanban” is named for a Japanese fusion restaurant in Brixton and was ushered in by Crowley’s tenor sax fanfare, supported by piano, bass and drums. A chiming piano motif then emerged, underpinning the gentle, woozy textures of the horns. Crowley emerged as the featured soloist but the interplay between the horns was exceptional throughout, becoming increasingly garrulous towards the latter stages of the piece.

Also from the “Dream Circus” album the performance concluded with the vibrant “Some Things Are Just So Simple”, which combined folkish melody with a hard bop sensibility and a high degree of compositional sophistication.  Introduced by the leader at the bass this piece featured a rousing horn led theme and incorporated a remarkable piano solo from Dunachie, playing through the pain barrier after sustaining hand injuries during the course of an altercation with a London escalator! His extended keyboard excursion was followed by muscular sax solos from Crowley on tenor and Smith on alto, prior to a rousing finish featuring the unison lines of reeds and brass, with Chatterton featuring on trumpet.

This truly was state of the art contemporary jazz from some of the best musicians on the London jazz scene. The sextet totally blew the audience away with a programme of all original compositions by the band’s talented bassist / composer / leader. But it wasn’t just Mullov-Abbado that excelled, every member of this exceptional sextet performed brilliantly in a commendably tight ensemble performance that was made all the more remarkable by the fact that this was Davis’ first gig with the group and that Dunachie was nursing an injury. A great way to get the 2025 Wall2Wall Jazz Festival underway in front of a nearly full house. The discerning Abergavenny audience loved them and gave them a terrific reception.

It had been some eight years since Mullov-Abbado was last in Abergavenny and this show represented a triumphant return. For myself I was pleased to see some of the “Effra” material being played live at last, in addition to other highlights from Mullov-Abbado’s impressive back catalogue.

My thanks to Misha, Liam and George for speaking with me after the gig and to Misha for the gift of a copy of the “Dream Circus” album, the only one that was missing in my collection. I was going to buy it but instead purchased the 2020 release “Music We Love”, a duo recording by Misha on double bass and his mother Viktoria Mullova on violin. It’s an intimate and beguiling collection featuring a wide range of material, with Misha describing the repertoire as “a variety of music stretching across many genres, including classical music, contemporary jazz, Brazilian jazz and folk songs from different parts of the world”. The programme includes some of Misha’s own compositions as part of an intriguing and eclectic mix. It’s very different to the sextet recordings and is less obviously ‘jazz’, but it still makes for enjoyable and interesting listening.

 

 

 

 

 

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