Since summer, Leila has been performing with Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir for concerts events in London and New York City.
Reverend Billy said “I’ve never had a piano partner for my sermons like Leila Adu. She’s paralleled with me on these 15 minutes-long forays for a few months now, including shows in London, and the sermons are evolving because of her presence.”
“I’m getting more in touch with the ‘song in the talk.’ Laurie Anderson once said that preaching is “the landscape between talking and singing”. More music in the vowels, more percussion in the hard sounds… The mysterious relationship between how a preacher sings the words and the how the meaning come through, Leila is right there handing it over to the listeners…”
Neil Young also gave a shout out with a photo of Reverend Billy and Leila in Times-Contrarian Earth News.
Photo by John Quilty