Another ground-breaking initiative proving that the Elgar Festival really means Elgar For Everyone!
Join us for the first of our new, sure to be hugely popular, late night concerts in The Hall at the Royal Porcelain Works.
We welcome one of the UK’s most groundbreaking jazz ensembles for an evening of genre-bending music, and surely a healthy dose of Elgar…. as you’ve never heard him before.
Friday 29 May at 10 PM
Club Elgar at the Royal Porcelain Works
The Misha Mullov-Abbado Group
The Misha Mullov- Abbado Group
“It will not be many years before Misha becomes one of the world’s leading figures in music” La Jornada
“An unfailing inventive, artfully produced, and delightfully sunny debut” The Telegraph on New Ansonia (UK)
“Both his composing talents and his propulsive bass-playing are currently such hot UK jazz news” The Guardian (UK)
The Misha Mullov-Abbado Group is made up of some of the finest, multi-award-winning musicians in London, and under Misha’s direction the group performs his original compositions and arrangements with a broad variety of influences. The band has performed at King’s Place, the Barbican Centre, the Elgar Room as part of the BBC Proms Lates series and has played at many of UK’s jazz venues. Having been signed to Edition Records the group has released its debut album “New Ansonia” that has been included in “Best Jazz Albums 2015” of both The Telegraph and BBC Radio 3. The band released a second album “Cross-Platform Interchange” also on Edition Records in 2017.
The band’s repertoire is influenced by a broad spectrum of music in the classical, jazz and pop genres as well folk traditions from around the world, particularly from South America. The music contains chorale based and contemporary-classical styles that are influenced by Bach and Brahms right through to Stravinsky and Bartok and beyond, and jazz musicians such as Bill Frisell. Misha’s music is also heavily based on swing, funk and other groove-based styles influenced by Avishai Cohen, Ray Brown, Gareth Lockrane and Jasper Høiby, as well as pop giants Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire.
Misha Mullov-Abbado double bass
Winner of the 2014 Kenny Wheeler Jazz Prize, Misha Mullov-Abbado is an in-demand bass player, composer and arranger based in London. He is a 2017 BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, a 2014 City of Music Foundation Artist and has released two albums on Edition Records as a band-leader and composer; Cross-Platform Interchange (2017) and New Ansonia (2015), both of which have been extremely well-received in newspapers and magazines across Europe and the latter of which has been included in “Best Jazz Albums of 2015” by The Telegraph and BBC Radio 3. As an experienced band-leader but also a versatile sideman Misha has performed at many of London’s top venues such as Ronnie Scott’s, the Vortex, 606 Club, Pizza Express and Royal Albert Hall, as well as venues in the rest of the UK and around the world. Having won the 2014 Dankworth Prize for jazz composition Misha is an experienced composer and writes for various jazz groups as well as classical soloists and ensembles, and is influenced by a variety of jazz, classical and pop music. In November 2019 Matthew Barley along with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Michael Seal gave the world premiere of Misha’s cello concerto at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at London’s Southbank Centre as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival and commissioned by BBC Radio 3.
After graduating from Gonville & Caius College Cambridge, where he studied music and composition with Robin Holloway and Jeremy Thurlow, Misha received a scholarship to study double bass at the Royal Academy of Music on the prestigious Masters jazz course with Jasper Høiby, Tom Herbert, Michael Janisch and Jeremy Brown. During his final year at the Academy Misha started his group and has since been performing regularly with it, with winning the Kenny Wheeler Prize in his final term leading him to record his debut album. As well as writing for his band Misha has been commissioned by a variety of musicians and ensembles such as Viktoria Mullova, Thomas Larcher, the LSSO, the Pelleas Ensemble, the Hermes Experiment, and the North Sea Ensemble.
Since leaving the Academy Misha has been performing with a variety of musicians such as Stan Sulzmann, Paul Clarvis, Enzo Zirilli, Sam Lee, Nessi Gomes, Alice Zawadzki, Tom Green, Tom Millar, Ralph Wyld and Liam Dunachie. He co-directs the Patchwork Jazz Orchestra, an exciting young big band in London that plays original compositions written by members of the band, that won the 2015 Peter Whittingham Award.