Alice Zawadzki has already established a reputation as a jazz singer, but this project with the Manchester Collective also engaged her talents as a violinist and composer. The concept for Bag of Bones, a monodrama in four sung scenas, stemmed from a poem by Zawadzki’s Polish grandmother, Irena Protassewicz, written on the eve of the second world war, which Zawadzki uses to explore her own cultural roots while honouring her grandmother.
Walking slowly down the auditorium steps towards the stage, Zawadzki first appeared as an old woman, clutching the titular bag, from which she drew out bones, held tightly as though holy relics, sacred remains of a lost lover. Every utterance took on a ritualistic quality, as did her playing of a tiny violin, its neck and scroll fashioned from a humerus. The shock of it then being smashed on the ground was akin to the climax of Peter Maxwell Davies’s 8 Songs for a Mad King.
