Ofam 2018: "la Vie En Rose" at Oregon Festival of American Music at John G Shedd Institute for the Arts

Given the breadth of her musical journey, it would be hard to guess just who has most inspired Siri Vik...but for those of us who have long known and loved her work one legend in particular comes immediately to mind: la môme piaf, "The Little Sparrow". In 2010 we presented Siri's first study of the legendary French chanteuse, simply called, La Vie en rose and have revisited that project twice since. "As I’ve continued to perform these heart-anthems over the years," Siri muses, "time and again, I’ve been struck by how powerfully listeners of our day and age respond to the music--in particular how ardently they love the voice and the memory, the idea, of Édith Piaf. Like a splash of red paint against a clean white wall, Édith Piaf’s voice leaves a singularly vivid impression--it is the impression the world holds of all of France and its music. Her voice is not only a sound, but a vessel which carries in its strain the echoes of loves, losses, the quiet desperations, the boundless passions, the stories of a people. Her voice has reached through the last century into the 21st with a reverberation and a power to haunt and grip. Like many great artists, Piaf paid a price for her bright star; she carried a burden of sorts, the burden of possessing the voice who sang--who spoke--for every human heart: 'It’s not only my voice which sings, it is a crowd of voices...'"...

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Given the breadth of her musical journey, it would be hard to guess just who has most inspired Siri Vik...but for those of us who have long known and loved her work one legend in particular comes immediately to mind: la môme piaf, "The Little Sparrow". In 2010 we presented Siri's first study of the legendary French chanteuse, simply called, La Vie en rose and have revisited that project twice since. "As I’ve continued to perform these heart-anthems over the years," Siri muses, "time and again, I’ve been struck by how powerfully listeners of our day and age respond to the music--in particular how ardently they love the voice and the memory, the idea, of Édith Piaf. Like a splash of red paint against a clean white wall, Édith Piaf’s voice leaves a singularly vivid impression--it is the impression the world holds of all of France and its music. Her voice is not only a sound, but a vessel which carries in its strain the echoes of loves, losses, the quiet desperations, the boundless passions, the stories of a people. Her voice has reached through the last century into the 21st with a reverberation and a power to haunt and grip. Like many great artists, Piaf paid a price for her bright star; she carried a burden of sorts, the burden of possessing the voice who sang--who spoke--for every human heart: 'It’s not only my voice which sings, it is a crowd of voices...'"

It is with great pleasure that we present Siri's evolving tribute to Édith Piaf to the audiences of OFAM 2018.

This show is offered twice the Festival, on Friday August 3rd at 1:30 pm (matinee) and Thursday August 9th at 8 pm.

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