Ali’s New York dream
Openly gay songstress Ali Hughes and her band The Thieves will present a special fundraising performance of their Leonard Cohen tribute show, Leonard Cohen Koans, at the Basement on May 31.
Money raised will help get the band to the New York International Fringe Festival in August.
“My creative partner Daryl Wallis and I are interested in Cohen’s spiritual journey: how he connects his Zen Buddhism with his Judaism, and how that influences his work. What we’ve delivered is an organic expression of our response to his work,” Hughes told the Star Observer.
It sounds like a much more scholarly project than your usual Cohen covers night — no coincidence, then, that it started life as a university project.
“The idea came up when I was on a creative retreat while studying a Bachelor of Arts. It was a project-based study for uni, so a lot of the work I did for the academic side of it really helped inform the performance.”
Having premiered the show in Sydney in 2010 to rave reviews, “the most obvious thing for me is to take it home, to Cohen’s home in New York, and see what the response is”.
info: Visit www.aliandthethieves.com
