Incantation: The Embodied Aleph-Bet
Widener Lecture Hall, Penn Museum, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia
Vocal artist Victoria Hanna brings new life to ancient text through sonic interpretations of Jewish mystical and magical traditions centered on Hebrew letters. She approaches the aleph-bet with a unique blend of music, surrealism, and spiky feminism, exploring language, the voice, and the body as tools for creating worlds.
Hanna’s work draws on a deep well of kabbalistic writings such as the “Book of Creation,” and she creates haunting vocal interpretations of ritual items such as Hebrew amulets and the mysterious Aramaic incantation bowls—many of which reside in the Penn Museum’s renowned collections.
In this one-of-a-kind mashup of art, artifacts, and learning, Hanna will be joined by Penn professor Simcha Gross, a leading expert on the magical bowls, to introduce the culture of demons and spells in the ancient Near East, where they were produced.
NOTE: Arrive early to browse the Middle East Galleries adjacent to Widener Hall and view a temporary exhibit of magical bowls never before displayed in public, between 4:30 and 6:00 pm, with Gross and members of the museum’s collections staff on hand to answer questions.
Hanna’s performance and discussion will respond to these objects and traditions, forging an encounter across time and opening up rich new ways of imagining and embodying Hebrew text.
Featuring
Simcha Gross
University of Pennsylvania
Simcha Gross is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and studies Jews over the first millennium of the common era in their Roman, Persian, and Islamic contexts. His first book, Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity, was published by Cambridge University Press.
Victoria Hanna
A rabbi’s daughter, Hanna grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem. The home was full of books, from which Hanna absorbed words and letters. As a child, she stuttered, but finally turned the problem into an opportunity and harnessed it as part of her expression. The song is her healing power and language is her tool for creation.
Hanna’s first video single Aleph-Bet and subsequent releases wowed audiences with their Mizrahi-inflected “kabbalistic rap,” and she has continued to garnish praise for her music and her artistic vocalization of Hebrew text ever since.
She has taught and held workshops at distinguished universities including Yale University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, Virginia Tech, Monash University in Melbourne, Tel Aviv University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and created sound installations for the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, and the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv.
Tom Kraines
University of Pennsylvania
A member of the Daedalus Quartet, cellist Tom Kraines has forged a multifaceted career, equally comfortable with avant-garde improvisation, new music, and traditional repertoire. He has given musical improvisation workshops and performances at universities and schools across the country, and has taught cello and chamber music at the Peabody Conservatory, the Longy School of Music, Yellow Barn, and Princeton University. He currently teaches at the Settlement Music School, and is director of chamber music at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also teaches cello.
Cosponsors
Presented in partnership with the Penn Museum, with support from the Goldhirsh-Yellin Foundation. Katz Center public programming is supported by gifts from the Klatt Family and the Harry Stern Family Foundation.
