Solem Quartet with Alice Zawadzki (voice)

Two giant musical voices of the late twentieth century – Steve Reich and Kate Bush – meet in this pivotal event, and frame the work of the celebrated songwriter, Alice Zawadzki.

Steve Reich’s iconic Different Trains opens the show. Written in 1988, it is a work that looks forward in its musical language, and looks back with its subject matter. Perhaps Reich’s most emotional work, Different Trains stands as a monument to the war generation. Composed for string quartet + tape, the work utilises recorded speech as a source for the melodic material. Excerpts from interviews with people from the United States and Europe, including survivors of the Holocaust, detail personal experiences of those differing continents before, during and after the war.

The acclaimed Solem Quartet is then joined by the award-winning singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer, Alice Zawadzki. Together they perform some of the Alice’s own magical songs, specially tailored to embrace the unique qualities inherent to the Quartet, followed by a set of some of Kate Bush’s most loved songs such as Running Up That Hill, And Dream of Sheep, and This Woman’s Work, in evocative arrangements for string quartet and voice by Solem Quartet violinist, William Newell. Like Reich, Kate Bush is a visionary artist, pushing the boundaries of genre, form and style. The placement of Alice’s songs alongside those of Kate Bush offers a meaningful dialogue, linking a rich tradition of women’s creativity in music from the 70s and 80s right up to the present day.

“from the opening ‘Cloudbusting’ … to ‘Running Up That Hill’ with Zawadzki declamatory over sympathetic strings, the songs emerged fresh-minted.” The Review Hub

“The quartet play along with the recording, flawlessly mirroring, and imitating the distinctive noises of once recorded trains along with imitating the sound of recorded speech through unique and specialised strokes”. Quays Life

“Violinist William Newell’s lush reimagining of Bush’s ‘And dream of sheep’, for example, is played with moving suppleness and intensity” The Strad

“With her glacial, folksy vocals and puckish fiddle, Alice Zawadzki would be notable enough. Add her compositional range and whimsical hypercreativity and she becomes something of a phenomenon… displaying a similar otherness as some of our treasured pop eccentrics (Kate Bush, Bjork)” MOJO