BMJ Collective with Fabienne Ambuehl, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre for the Arts, Abergavenny, 12/07/2026.

Jack Mac (Jack McDougall) – tenor & soprano sax,  Nick Kacal – double bass, Ryan Thrupp – drums
with
Fabienne Ambuehl – piano, vocals

PROLOGUE

BMJ Collective is essentially the house band of Black Mountain Jazz.  Originally formed in 2021 for that year’s ‘hybrid’ Wall2Wall Jazz Festival the line-up has undergone a number of personnel changes and currently features founder member Jack Mac on reeds and occasional vocals, together with Nick Kacal on double bass and Ryan Thrupp at the drums.

Mac, Kacal and Thrupp also act as tutors at the BMJazzKatz sessions which bring young people  together for regular jazz sessions at the Melville Centre, with the intention of forming a youth big band. Mac is heading the programme and the Katz, together with their tutors, have already made a number of public performances, with some of these covered elsewhere on this site.

The idea of the tutors then performing for the public in the evening following the Sunday afternoon sessions is not only for ticket sales to contribute towards the teaching costs, but also for the students to see their tutors performing at their best and embodying the JazzKatz motto of “work, play, inspire”.

As these BMJ Collective gigs have now become regular monthly events it is intended that a different guest musician will be invited to perform with the group each time. To date the ‘BMJ Collective With’ series has featured vocalist Sarah Meek,  pianist / vocalists Hilary Cameron and Gareth Williams, pianists Alex Hutton, Ross Hicks Michael Blanchfield, Tom Berge. Dom Pipkin, John Crawford, Sean Hargreaves and Anders Olinder, trumpeter Gethin Liddington and guitarists Rob Luft, Chris Cobbson, Denny Ilett, John Close, Nigel Price, Nicolas Meier and Mike Outram  Founding member Alex Goodyear also returned for a guest appearance at the drum kit, temporarily replacing Ryan Thrupp. All of these performances have been hugely enjoyable events and the majority have been reviewed elsewhere on The Jazzmann.

Every performance in the series has included an interesting selection of material sourced from the jazz canon and beyond, the majority of it chosen, or written, by the guest performer. All of the gigs have exceeded my expectations, representing far more than the usual obligatory or perfunctory ‘house trio with guest soloist’ session.   As I have previously observed,  “this is a series of events that continues to punch well above its weight”. 

Nick Kacal spent many years on the London jazz circuit before re-locating to South Wales. He quickly established himself as a vital presence on the Welsh jazz scene but has retained his links with the English capital and more recently many of Kacal’s old London friends have been travelling up to Abergavenny to play a guest slot with the BMJ Collective.

When the BMJC With series first began the majority of the guests were from South Wales or Bristol but the word has got around within the jazz community about just how good the BMJ house band is and how appreciative the Melville audience is. Established London names now seem to be queueing up to come to play with the Collective in Abergavenny. I’ve consistently championed the series for “punching above its weight” and I’m pleased to see that its fame is continuing to spread. It’s become a very attractive gig for London based musicians, the early start of 7.00 pm making it easy for them to get back to ‘town’ at a reasonable hour.

BMJ COLLECTIVE with FABIENNE AMBUEHL

Fabienne Ambuehl is a Swiss born pianist, vocalist and composer /  songwriter now based in south London.

Interestingly the invitation for her to come and perform in Abergavenny with the BMJC didn’t come from Nick Kacal but from Ryan Thrupp. The young drummer has recently moved to London and is already making his mark in the English capital, although he still makes time to come back to the Melville to perform with the BMJC. That he chooses to do so is a testament as to just how good this trio is and just how tight the group has become musically, their rapport quickly transmitting itself to their illustrious guests.

One of the musicians that Thrupp has been working with in London is Ambuehl and she jumped at the chance to make her first ever visit to Wales to perform with the trio. On a particularly lovely summer’s day the beauty of the mountains surrounding Abergavenny certainly helped to make this Swiss miss feel at home.

Ambuehl is a musician with a strong and highly personal musical vision, as evidenced by tonight’s performance and by the two full length albums that she has released to date.

Recorded at the famous Artesuono Studio in Italy and released in 2015 on the German record label Traumton “Glitterwoods” was a trio album made with the deluxe rhythm team of bassist Yuri Goloubev and drummer / percussionist Asaf Sirkis, both previous visitors to BMJ and both regular presences on The Jazzmann web pages. Mixing instrumental pieces with highly personalised songs it revealed Ambuehl to be a highly accomplished pianist, a distinctive vocalist and an adventurous writer. More than a decade on it still sounds strikingly contemporary.

Released in 2024 on Ubuntu Music “Thrive” is Ambuehl’s latest album release, recorded with a stellar UK line up featuring bassist Matt Ridley, drummer Jon Scott and guitarists Tom Ollendorff and Ant Law, these musicians forming the nucleus of her regular working band.

Tonight’s set featured a mix of material from “Thrive”, newer songs intended for a putative third album, and an eclectic mix of jazz standards and other outside material, these given a very individual treatment by Ambuehl.

The quartet opened with Ambuehl’s original composition “Binocular”, an instrumental piece recorded for the “Thrive” album. Intended as a musical depiction of both the beauty of the land as viewed from a mountain peak and the busyness and chaos of a city this was centred around Ambuehl’s rumbling piano arpeggios and Thrupp’s martial drumming, the music building up an impressive rhythmic momentum that provided the platform for Mac’s incisive soprano sax soloing. Ambuehl’s own solo incorporated a percussive quality that was sometimes reminiscent of McCoy Tyner, this fuelled by Thrupp’s busy drumming and Kacal’s muscular and powerful bass lines. The performance culminated in a drum feature from Thrupp, underpinned by the sounds of Ambuehl’s recurring piano motif and Mac’s squiggling soprano. An attention grabbing start.

The first vocal item was an arrangement of “The Old Country”, a song written by Nat Adderley and Curtis Lewis and famously recorded by the duo of saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and vocalist Nancy Wilson. Pianist Keith Jarrett later recorded a notable version with his ‘Standards Trio’ featuring bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette.
Ambuehl was a pianist before she became a singer but she is an impressive pianist / vocalist whose blues tinged delivery was augmented by Kacal’s double bass and Thrupp’s brushed drums. Mac switched to tenor sax and kept his powder dry at first, before launching straight into a fluent solo, followed by Kacal on double bass and Ambuehl at the piano, with Kacal continuing to provide countermelodies.

A new instrumental composition from Ambuehl was announced as having two potential titles, each essentially meaning the same thing. “Good Things Come And Good Things Go” is also sometimes known as “Nothing Is As Certain As Change”. This was a piece with a song like quality about the main theme, this providing the launch pad for Mac’s powerful and expansive tenor sax solo, this followed by the composer at the piano and Kacal on double bass.

A passage of unaccompanied piano introduced a stunning arrangement of the Jimi Hendrix song “Little Wing”. Drums and bass were added as Mac reverted to soprano to deliver a solo that was again both incisive and expansive. Ambuehl’s piano solo exhibited similar qualities, urged on by Thrupp’s powerful drumming, which understandably exhibited a strong rock influence. But this performance wasn’t just about the playing, with Ambuehl delivering a vocal tour de force that variously emphasised the power,  beauty and flexibility of her singing.

The first set concluded with another piece from the “Thrive” recording. “Soft Days” is an instrumental composition loosely based on The Beatles song “A Hard Days Night”. I’ll admit to not picking up on this at the time, but it is discernable when one listens to the album. The rumbling, train like rhythms generated by Ambuehl in conjunction with Kacal and Thrupp fired up Mac’s tenor sax soloing. He was followed by Kacal with a powerfully plucked double bass feature. Ambuehl’s piano explorations, at first unaccompanied, also incorporated her soft, Jarrett like vocal exhortations prior to the return of the rolling rhythms and the re-emergence of Mac’s tenor.
An excellent first set that really left the Melville audience buzzing.

Set two began in extraordinary fashion with “Mountain”, an Ambuehl original based on the words of “California Poem”, written by Johnny Cash and published in his book “Forever Words; The Unknown Poems”. Introduced by a dialogue between Ambuehl’s piano and Thrupp’s cymbals the musical discussion was later joined by Kacal’s double bass. Ambuehl then added incantatory wordless vocals, low register at first and building to exhibit an almost startling power, part yodel, part Sami joik as Mac finally entered the proceedings on soprano sax. Things quietened down again with a passage of unaccompanied piano, with bass and brushed drums added before Mac stated the main theme on soprano sax and Ambuehl sang the words of the two stanza poem. Mac’s soprano then tore away from the main body of the song to deliver a searing solo. A stunning start to the second half.

The second jazz standard of the night was Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “No More Blues”, with Ambuehl delivering the English language lyric in an unusually robust arrangement that also included extended instrumental solos from herself on piano and Mac on tenor, with Thrupp’s rapid brush work also representing a distinctive part of the arrangement.

Another song from the standards canon followed with Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark”. This was given a more conventional ballad arrangement with Ambuehl’s vocals augmented by tender tenor sax, melodic double bass and delicately brushed drums. This was a particularly beautiful rendition that was warmly received by the Abergavenny audience.

Another as yet unrecorded original – there must be a third Ambuehl album in the offing, surely – saw Mac reverting to soprano on a song addressing the nature of creativity, with Ambuehl’s voice and piano enhanced by Thrupp’s subtle drum colourations.
The title track of the “Thrive” album is a setting of D.H. Lawrence’s four line poem “Self Pity”. Ambuehl’s song is also inspired by the beauty of the evening primrose. The piece was introduced by an extended passage of contemplative solo piano with double bass and brushed drums added before Ambuehl sang Lawrence’s words. Mac then entered on soprano sax, delivering his solo before the return of Ambuehl’s semi-spoken vocals.

The final song of the set was a rollicking rendition of Ida Cox’s proto-feminist anthem “Wild Women Don’t Have The Blues”, with Ambuehl singing powerfully in authentically bluesy fashion and the members of the Collective providing suitably ‘kick ass’ support, with Mac on raunchy tenor sax and Ambuehl on blues infused piano the featured soloists.. The performance was so vibrant that at least one audience member was moved to get up and dance. Many more got to their feet at the close to give this one off quartet a truly rousing reception, and one that was well earned.

The subject of an encore wasn’t really negotiable and the band members remained on stage to round of the evening with “Lakeside”, a new Ambuehl original dedicated to her home town in Switzerland and written about “all the fun things that happen on a lake”. This lively, highly rhythmic instrumental ended the evening on a high and reminded me of the celebrated Keith Jarrett composition “The Windup”. Mac continued to blow hard on tenor, Ambuehl pounded the keys with an obvious relish and Thrupp rounded things off with a final salvo at the kit. Terrific stuff.

Following on from last month’s triumphant gig with guitarist Nicolas Meier this was yet another example of the Collective and their guest at the top of their game as this monthly series continues to deliver – in spades.

This was another case of a one off ensemble gelling really quickly and doing so on largely unfamiliar material. It’s a tribute to the sight reading skills of the BMJC members and to the extraordinary rapport of the core trio that the visiting artists are able to fit in so quickly and easily, and to do so largely playing their own compositions and arrangements. Such standards as there are are are approached in consistently interesting fashion, there’s nothing tired or particularly predictable about this series of gigs. The only certainty is that they’re going to be good, and sometimes, as tonight exceptional.

The quality of the series is reflected in the audience numbers, listeners have remained loyal and tonight’s event was pleasingly well attended, especially during the current heat wave and with Wimbledon and the World Cup offering plenty of distractions.

Tonight’s gig was one of THE highlights in a consistently impressive series. Ambuehl relished the opportunity to perform with such good musicians in such a beautiful location and was delighted to be able to get her own music ‘out there’. We had a very pleasant chat after the show and she’s an artist that I’ll be keeping an eye open for in the future, and especially if there’s the prospect of a new album in the pipeline.

 

 

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