Music & Performance
Alicia weaves violin, voice and electronic pedals together to create intimate atmospheres of experimental beauty. A composer, performer and songwriter, Rabins tours internationally as well as scoring film and TV, drawing on her classical violin training and her love of folk and ambient music.
She has performed bluegrass across Central America and Kuwait as a US State Department cultural ambassador; and was the violinist in NYC’s acclaimed klezmer-punk band Golem for eight years. A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, her one-woman chamber-rock opera, premiered at Joe’s Pub in NYC, was named one of the year’s best theater shows in Portland by the Willamette Week, and is now an award-winning independent film. She is currently at work on a theatrical adaptation of her Girls in Trouble song cycle.
Girls in trouble
Girls in Trouble is an indie-folk song cycle about the complicated lives of women in Torah. With this project, Alicia draws on her unique background as a musician, writer and feminist Torah teacher to mine the complex and fascinating stories of Biblical women, exploring the hidden places where their lives overlap with our own.
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A kaddish for bernie Madoff
In A KADDISH FOR BERNIE MADOFF, an underground musician becomes obsessed with Bernie Madoff's massive financial fraud and finds herself inside a real-life meta-musical about trust, deception, and healing. Winner of the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2021 Ashland Independent Film Festival, Terry Porter Visionary Award at the 2021 Sarasota Film Festival and Best Young Director Award at the 2021 Port Townsend Film Festival. Created by and starring Alicia Jo Rabins, directed by Alicia J. Rose; co-adapted for screen by Rabins and Rose.
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Sugar Shack
Seth Rogovoy, author of The Essential Klezmer, calls Alicia Jo Rabins 'a walking encyclopedia of fiddling traditions.' She is one of a growing number of young musicians who, searching for an alternative to the overcommercialization of today's popular music, have returned to their roots: acoustic, raw, handmade music. Her fiddling draws from Appalachian traditions, klezmer music, Irish tunes, and more, combining a love of tradition with irreverence and humor.