KRISTEN LEIGH
MUSICIAN & SONGWRITER
"SONG OF SITIDOS"
I wrote this song in graduate school while studying the ancient Hebrew wisdom book of Job. "Sitidos” is the name that Jewish Midrash tradition gave to Job's wife, who goes unnamed in the original Biblical text. We think of Job as the guy who loses everything, but he doesn't lose his wife. She lives. Which means she loses everything he loses. And so I wanted to explore the Job experience from her perspective. This version was recorded at the Sunset Theatre in Asheboro, NC with Eric Traynor on piano and West McNeill on cello.
Click below to download an annotated lyric sheet that explores the deeper themes of the song in relation to the original Biblical text.
NEW SINGLE
North Carolina native Kristen Leigh's music blurs the lines between genres and styles, drawing from a diverse range of influences including folk, anti-folk, alternative, indie rock, hip hop, old-time, punk, classical, rock n roll, jazz, and the blues to produce unique, folk-based compositions with orchestral arrangements that are playful, provocative, and prophetic. Her emotionally honest lyrics explore themes like vulnerability, trauma, grief, courage, disillusionment, joy, defiant hope, and redemption.
Kristen has been performing since the age of 16, when she first took the stage at Tate Street Coffeehouse in her hometown of Greensboro, NC. Since then, she has performed in hundreds of venues across the U.S., at festivals, dive bars, restaurants, auditoriums, street corners, theaters, churches, house shows, and memory care facilities. Kristen has performed on both radio and television, and her music career has taken her as far as Indonesia, where she spent a summer studying interreligious dialogue and gamelan music at Gadja Mada Univeristy in Jogjakarta, and performed on Indonesian television one evening with Sufi mystic Cak Nun and his gamelan orchestra.
Kristen's live sets are uniquely captivating experiences that nearly always include some form of interactive audience participation. As a multi-instrumentalist, Kristen switches effortlessly between guitar, piano, ukelele, and banjo, and will often break out a fiddle or shruti box to provide the haunting drone for a Gaelic chant or an old primitive Baptist hymn. She is usually joined by a rotating ensemble of instrumentalists who help bring her songs to life by accompanying her on piano, strings, woodwinds, brass, accordion, harmonica, glockenspiel, and the occasional dancing chicken.
Since 2005, Kristen has independently recorded, produced, and released five full-length albums on which she has played most of the instruments. In addition to recording and performing music, Kristen is also a scholar of music, religion, psychology, and the arts, offering spiritual direction in the contemplative Christian tradition as well as classes, workshops, and retreats in communal singing, spiritual practice, social justice, and more.
