Alicia Jo Rabins

“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!