2018 Chuzpah! Festival: Barbara Adler with Ten Thousand Wolves & Jake Klar

2018 Chuzpah! Festival

Musical Co-bill with Musician/Poet/Visual Artist Jake Klar

February 24 at the Fox Cabaret

Premiere of Decoy

Sardis, British Columbia -- A duck hunter dies, leaving behind a collection of antique decoys, crammed into a pair of oversized duffles and a disintegrating cardboard box. At the funeral, his son realizes he won’t ever open the dirt-caked bags. He sells the lot to a dealer, who sells them to a woman, who finally unties the knots to reveal the whole collection, and the beginnings of a very human drama. Decoy weaves together a suite of meticulously crafted folk songs with a poetic narrative that draws together themes of mortality, intimacy and longing for the natural world. Live music by an 8-piece band, projection and performance combine to tell a story about the power of artifice to bring us closer to something real.

Led by interdisciplinary artist Barbara Adler, Ten Thousand Wolves in an intimately collaborating ensemble whose work brings together songwriting, storytelling, theater, design and whatever other tool comes to hand. The result could be called contemporary songspiel. Decoy builds on music co-written by Barbara Adler and renowned guitarist/composer Ron Samworth (Talking Pictures), with vocal arrangements by Shannon Scott (Company B Jazz Band), instrumentation by James Meger (Sick Boss), Gavin Youngash (Star Captains) and Skye Brooks (Fond of Tigers), and staging by theatre artists Megan Stewart and Ashley Aron.