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 a top-tier rock musicians and a string trio, in a powerful concert integrating Biblical women’s stories with song.
I Was a Desert: Songs of the Matriarchs is a gorgeous, richly textured multimedia performance that builds upon Rabins’ long-running Girls in Trouble song cycle to celebrate the stories of women in Jewish myth and 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 kaleidoscope of musical traditions including orchestral indie rock, bluegrass, klezmer, and classical.
Throughout, Rabins explores the meaning of spiritual texts in a secular world, centers women’s experience in historically patriarchal traditions, and interweaves the choir’s own anonymous contributions of how these stories relate to their own lives. Both a celebration of Jewish culture and deep intercultural connections, this show is not to be missed!
Doors open at 6:00 PM ET.