Alice Zawadzki: Bag of Bones
About the Event
Alice Zawadzki presents a new version of her acclaimed chamber opera, Bag of Bones, an immersive work of inherited memory, Eastern European folklore and cultural severance, blending strings, accordion, keyboards and voice.
As part of her Kings Place residency, Alice Zawadzki presents this immersive work, compelled into existence by inherited memories and cultural severance. Less a concert than a ritualistic act, it seeks to cast off the ghosts of the past – often tenderly, sometimes violently.
Evoking the folklore of Eastern Europe through a vivid landscape of movement and colour, Zawadzki’s original score is performed by an ensemble of strings, accordion, keyboards and voice, blending contemporary classical, folk and jazz traditions. Through the specificity of this narrator’s story, something universal emerges, and it is in this spirit that audiences are invited to lay down some of their own ghosts and make way for something new.
‘A genuine original’ The Guardian
This event will last approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes, including an interval.
Alice Zawadzki
Vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Alice Zawadzki becomes a Resident Artist at Kings Place with a series of ambitious projects including newly commissioned work throughout, that explore folklore, ancestry and the stories we inherit.
Rooted in Alice’s Polish heritage yet drawing on traditions from across Britain and the rest of Europe, the residency weaves together music, storytelling, ritual and myth, blurring the boundaries between classical, jazz, folk and music theatre. Across three distinctive productions, Alice revisits ancient tales, pagan traditions and folkloric figures, using them as a lens through which to explore memory, identity, belonging and our relationship with the natural world.
From the immersive music theatre of Bag of Bones to the elemental sound world of Replace Your Gods, and the playful winter folklore of The Turning, each project reveals Alice’s unique ability to connect contemporary audiences with stories that have travelled across generations and borders, with a focus on collective transformation, healing and uplift.
Bag of Bones was originally commissioned and premiered by Manchester Collective in 2023.