Michelle Gurevich (Chinawoman), the Canadian film director and singer of Russian descent, is returning with her fourth studio album New Decadence, the first bearing her given name. The ladies’ evening will be opened by All Strings Detached – guitarists and vocalists Vesna Godler and Jana Beltran.
It’s difficult to describe the mysterious Michelle Gurevich’s music with classic music theory templates, though “Russian romance” and “dark romantic Euro pop” might come closest. She’s been compared to giants such as Leonard Cohen, the decadent Nico, even older stars such as Edith Piaf and early Alla Pugacheva, while her strong, manly voice brings to mind Tanita Tikaram.
Michelle, the daughter of a ballerina from Kirov and an engineer from Leningrad, grew up in Toronto’s Russian quarter, listening to records by European and Russian authors/singer-songwriters from the 1970s. She released three albums under the moniker Chinawoman, now continuing her career as Michelle Gurevich with her fourth album, New Decadence, produced in the same spirit as her previous releases.
Since 2010 she lives and works in Berlin, coming even closer to her Eastern European fans and regularly selling out concerts in cities such as Istanbul, Bucharest, Belgrade, Moscow, Athens and Berlin. She has already enraptured Ljubljana twice – in 2011 during the City of Women festival and in 2013 at Kino Šiška.
Female duo All Strings Detached was formed in April 2013 by Jana Beltran (vocals, electroacoustic guitar, flute) and Vesna Godler (vocals, electric bass guitar, drum). The expressive vocals and the artists’ personal stories intertwine in minimalistic arrangements, full of silences and evocative imagery, beauty, cities and the men they love. Their tales are simultaneously gentle and wild, sensitive, melancholic, shadowy and, above all, sincerely intimate and markedly alive.
With their recently released single ‘I Feel’ they’re announcing the release of their second album, due out this spring. At Kino Šiška, they will play several brand new songs, too fresh even for their upcoming release, as well as some of their evergreens. They’ll also bring along the last 20 copies of the first pressing of their debut album Heavy Rain, in case you haven’t added it to your collection yet.
Organisation: Kino Šiška and Kataman.
