Song/Book

Written By Alexandra Gorlin-Crenshaw

Song/Book

the short-form

Song/Book is a 25-minute solo performance of six folk songs with six accompanying artist books and crankies. I weave together live vocals, recorded piano arrangements of Jewish and Anglo-American folk songs, recorded voices layered into a choir, handmade books, paper-puppets and crankie scrolls manipulated on stage. A live camera and projector magnify the small books and subtle movements into wall-sized projections, creating a show that is both intimate and immersive. Suitable for audiences aged 8 and older.

Here is an excerpt:

Song/Book

the long-form

A 50-minute performance piece, currently in development, in which I explore sounds and voices of my Russian-Jewish-American roots, using live and pre-recorded music, arrangements of Hebrew, Yiddish, and American folk songs, recorded voices, original texts, and a growing series of hand-made artist books: I’ve called them Song/Books.

At the core of Song/Book are interviews I have conducted with close family members. My first impulse is to somehow store or record my family’s memories and stories, which seem at once foundational and fleeting. In the final version of Song/Book, I do not envision including the interviews in their original form; instead, I use them as a starting point, as primary source materials of sounds, emotions, and stories, splicing fragments of recorded voices with other collected sounds, and working them into musical pieces themselves. Like interludes or intermezzi, this music forms the glue connecting all of the other visual and musical elements into one multidisciplinary and [semi] autobiographical piece, an homage to the complexities and richness of family.

Upcoming live performance of an excerpt of Song/Book:

JUNE 10th, 2022 at 2 o’clock PM ET

Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montreal

RSVP by reserving your free ticket HERE

Alexandra Gorlin-Crenshaw
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Ava’s House