Bag of Bones, Alice Zawadzki’s bewitching new project for Manchester Collective, is new music at its most thrilling, dangerous and cathartic.
No one can outrun the past.
Take a pinch of a romantic song cycle, stir in some studio theatre and a touch of jazz, then filter the whole thing through a hessian sack of deep, dark Central European folklore... and you might be somewhere in the region of Bag of Bones.
Leading an ensemble comprising keys, accordion, percussion and strings, Zawadzki has created a deeply personal piece of music theatre that grapples with the cultural history and inherited stories that run back through her life to her Polish roots.
There are no sweet jazz songs in this landscape, but somehow, lightness always finds a way through the dark.
Brand new music sits alongside a set curated by Zawadzki and the Collective – a set that is still evolving as the work finds its final form. The ink is not yet dry on this one.
