Music
Press
There can't have been many in the audience who weren't touched, or moved, or carried back on a wave of their own memories as Linn Lorkin (backed by Hershal and Anna Rugis) sang her life to us.
Starting with The Girl from Tokoroa, with piano and accordion lending a Parisian air to a Kiwi story, Lorkin carried us along with her. She had us laughing with Helping Dad Milk the Cows - the line fed to her mother after spending the afternoon running naked down a hill in sight of passing motorists.
We could relive our childhood in At the Beach. Then we were off to Uncle Stan's favourite picnic spot, with a driving piano and Aunt Dorie's bacon and egg pies, in Family Picnic Samba.
The first set finished with Driving Home From the Movies, with Grease rock 'n' roll undertones recalling the ambience of the black and white picture experience of the 1950s and '60s.
The second set was a mixture of new and old material from Lorkin, some of it from the Linn in Grey Lynn album, as well as her new work Kiwiana, launched at the show.
There was the whimsy of The Great South Land and The Land of the Long White Cloud, then straight into a fun piece recalling the first South Island tour by the brilliant Jews Brothers Band (of which Lorkin and Hershal are members).
We were captivated by the soft, dream-like quality of Walking in a Green Land before the evening finished with a trio of songs about life as a singer, including the bittersweet You Should be a Star in Las Vegas and the rollicking When Tama Plays.
It wasn't a driving beat and pounding riffs - it was melodic, soft and especially evocative Kiwiana. Thanks, Linn. - Nelson Mail / Philip Gibbs
"Intimate theatre at its best where the audience was completely under the control of a skilled performer....
Creating scenes from life is Lorkin's particular musical genre.. her creativity is remarkable. She is a composer and lyricist of fresh songs, a singer of warm tones and and an actress who makes excellent use of her expressive eyes, mouth and hands." - Putaruru Press
" Lorkin is one of our cultural treasures. She writes cool, elegant songs with brilliantly tangled rhymes and dizzying musical twists. It's through these that she enchants us with some of the stories from her extraordinary career.." - NZ Listener
Discography
2006 Linn Lorkin's Kiwiana
2004 Too Much Talent (The Jews Brothers Band)
2003 Braeburn Sessions (The Jews Brothers Band)
2001 French Toast
2001 The Girl from Tokoroa
2000 My Yiddish Swing ( The Jews Brothers Band)
1996 Linn in Grey Lynn
1995 The Jews Brothers Band..live at Gerhard's
1995 Moruroa Va Vivre
1993 Cosmic Rock ( The Aunties)
1993 In a French Cafe
1990 Sidelong Glances
1986 In the Land of Music
1978 Lionel Hampton... Plays with Mike Nock
Photos
Bio
New Zealander Linn Lorkin studied French at universities in Auckland and Paris before turning to the performing life. She is a charismatic performer with a distinctive voice and strong keyboard skills. Her rapport with an audience is palpable as she tells the backstories to her original songs. Under her own label, Rouge Records, she has recorded and co- produced ten albums. Four of her own songs, two of French chansons (with her group French Toast) and four with The Jews Brothers Band (as lead singer).
Her work history includes the famed Ronnie Scott's in London, and supper clubs and piano bars in many European cities as well as an eight year stay in New York City where she met her partner Hershal Hersher, himself well known as a pianist in the New York latin music scene. There she developed her compositional skills and wrote her first hit song Family at the Beach. Back in NZ after the birth of her son, she performed with the avant-garde theatre group Inside Out Theatre, The First Ladies of Jazz Group, as lead singer for The Jews Brothers Band lead by husband Hershal Hersher and as the chanteuse in her own group French Toast.
Her album of cabaret songs, In a French Cafe, sells continually and her latest offering Linn Lorkin's Kiwiana is developing similar status with her many fans. An earlier album of originals recorded by Radio New Zealand with the NZ Symphony Orchestra won a Mobil Award.
Affectionately named the Piaf of the Pacific by the NZ media, Lorkin shares Edith's qualities of warmth, dramatic intensity and impeccable timing.
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