Alicia Jo Rabins
I Was a Desert: Songs of the Matriarchs
Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
36 Battery Pl
New York, NY 10280
May 23, 2024
6:30 PM EDT
I Was There
Leave a Review
About this concert
“Overwhelmingly beautiful.”
“It will be one of the most uplifting and impactful musical experiences of your year.”
–Audience responses to the West Coast premiere
Don’t miss this dynamic East Coast premiere of choral songs about Biblical women! Alicia Jo Rabins – a musician, composer and Torah teacher whose work the Atlantic calls “a blessing” – joins sonic forces with 95 singers from the award-winning Camas High School Choir (Washington State), plus the innovative Trio Fadolín on strings and three top-tier rock musicians, in a powerful concert integrating Biblical women’s stories with song. Trio Fadolín will also perform an opening set.
I Was a Desert: Songs of the Matriarchs is a gorgeous, richly textured, life-affirming multimedia song cycle that builds upon Rabins’ long-running Girls in Trouble project, musically reinterpreting the ancient stories of women in Jewish tradition and seeking the hidden places where their lives overlap with ours today.
With a colossal musical scale matching the power of these stories, this intergenerational, intercultural, and interdisciplinary supergroup draws from a rich palette of musical genres including orchestral indie rock, folk, and Jewish traditions.
Throughout, Rabins explores the meaning of spiritual texts in a secular world and centering women’s experiences in historically patriarchal traditions. Brief personal reflections by the choir members are woven into the performance, connecting ancient Biblical stories to the students’ own lives. A celebration of both diasporic Jewihs culture and deep intercultural connections, this show is not to be missed!
Show More
Find a place to stay
Event Lineup
Easily follow all your favorite artists by syncing your music
Sync Music
Share Event
Alicia Jo Rabins Biography
Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician, composer, performer and Torah teacher. The New York Times calls her voice "gorgeous"; the San Francisco Chronicle calls her writing "a poetry pageturner, both sexy and humble." She combines words, music, ritual and performance to create works of experimental beauty exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom texts, feminism, and everyday life. Rabins tours internationally as a musician and performer; her work has appeared at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and Joe’s Pub. As a musician and performer, she is the creator and performer of Girls in Trouble, an indie-folk song cycle about the complicated lives of Biblical women with accompanying curriculum, and A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, which began as a one-woman chamber-rock opera and was adapted into an award-winning independent feature film. Find her at www.aliciajo.com.
Read MoreExperimental. Folk. Feminist.
Indie Folk
Jewish Folk
Female Vocals
Feminist
Jewish Music
Jewish Rock
Violinist
Chamber Pop
Murder Ballads
Follow artist