Review: SOVIET ZION Musical Original Concept Album

Inspired by the history of Siberia’s Jewish Autonomous region, Soviet Zion is a new musical drama following the intertwining lives of six pioneers who move to Siberia to partake in a movement establishing the first Jewish homeland as a Yiddish-speaking socialist utopia. The feature-length radio play, written by Giles Howe with Roberto Trippini, centres on the pioneers as they question their identity, integrity, belonging and nationhood.

Soviet Zion was first presented as a concert in 2014 at The London Jewish Museum and this new arrangement features music by Howe and Katy Lipson, with symphonic orchestrations that were created in collaboration with film score arranger, Brian Freeland.

Created during lockdown, this ambitious new original concept album (expertly engineered, mixed and mastered by Vasken Arslainen) features a cast of twelve performers, although listening to the score, you would be forgiven for thinking there were far more, due to the richness and depth of the vocals.

The musical is almost entirely sung-through, allowing you to follow and engage with the characters throughout the piece. Despite it being an album and not a physical show, you can still pick out and differentiate the various characters and their personalities, which can sometimes be a concern when solely listening to a recording without visuals. Fortunately, it is easy to follow the story and paths of the various characters throughout the show and in fact, if you close your eyes, you can imagine the whole show taking place there in front of you.

The individual voices in the piece are, unsurprisingly, excellent with some of the slower solo numbers particularly enjoyable; but where this musical really comes into its own is when the whole cast comes together to sing the big set pieces. It’s during these moments that it is reminiscent of Les Miserables or My Lands Shore with all of the characters and their desires crashing into one another with overlapping vocals.

The cast recording features Kate Radmilovic as Mirele, Kimberly Blake as Zofia, Sam Young as Iser, Joseph Claus as David, Michaela Stern as Bayla, John Ellis as Oskar, Bruno Loxton as the Officer, Toni Green as Yenta/Narrator and David Francis as Joshua. Completing the cast are Naomi Kilby, Michal Ish-Horowitz, and guest vocalist Jeff Kuznicki.

The Soviet Zion original concept album is available to listen via iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon, and other major online music platforms.

For further information about the show, please click here.