Musician Allison Crowe is thrilled to perform with Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet for the World Premiere of "The Doorway" - a contemporary ballet from choreographer Jorden Morris opening the words and music of legendary poet, singer-songwriter, and survivor Leonard Cohen.

"Graceful, moving, achingly honest, the series of dance vignettes are set to Cohen's songs and poems, exploring the emotional journey across the threshold to love and longing," says the RWB of this new piece from Morris, creator of the tremendously successful and celebrated "Peter Pan" (2006 premiere) and "Moulin Rouge - The Ballet" (2009 premiere) for the company. For the live national broadcast of the 2011 Genie Awards, Morris created a sensuous pas de deux - embracing Cohen's song "Dance Me to the End of Love" - performed by Corps de Ballet member Sophia Lee and former RWB Principal Dancer, and current Ballet Master, Jaime Vargas with music from Montréal rock band Karkwa.

"Working with the RWB is going to be such an awesome experience - even to just watch these amazing people dance is gift enough," Allison Crowe says. "I am humbled to be able to be a part of such a beautiful project, in tribute to such a wonderfully talented and brilliant man, Leonard Cohen."

Growing up in Westmount, on the Island of Montreal, Cohen entered the fringes of a life in music as a Buckskin Boy. Though "born with the gift of a golden voice", and building a sterling reputation as a writer - author, poet and songsmith - in the '60s , '70s and on, he's endured stranger times to test his mettle. This century has witnessed a renaissance in appreciation of his work and Leonard Cohen reach his most cherished state as an artist. Emblematic of this status, in May 2012, as the RWB presents this new creation based on his art, Leonard Cohen will be feted for a lifetime of achievement in music and poetry - receiving the Glenn Gould Prize at Toronto's Massey Hall. One of the world's top concert draws, Cohen's newest album, "Old Ideas", charted #1 in countries 'round the globe.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, based in the culturally-vibrant city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, is Canada's oldest, and North America's longest continually operating, ballet company. Founded in 1939, it's the first ballet company in the world to be granted the Royal title - bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. And, it's the first organization anywhere to present a theatrical or dance production of Leonard Cohen's work. During the RWB tenure of Artistic Director Arnold Spohr (1958 - 1988), in Summer 1970, Brian Macdonald choreographed "The Shining People of Leonard Cohen" which debuted in Paris. Later, that July, it's staged at Canada's National Arts Centre in Ottawa - with eclectic band Lighthouse, and a pair of bats from the belfry, opening the show.

Today, André Lewis, named RWB Artistic Director in 1996, (he began his association as a dancer with Royal Winnipeg Ballet School in 1975), oversees the launch of this newest creation, "The Doorway - Scenes from Leonard Cohen". Jeff Herd, native Winnipegger, after a decade as company manager for Cirque du Soleil's "O" at the Bellagio, in Las Vegas, and some years overseas, is back home helping further the RWB's legacy in motion as Executive Director. Bob Stewart serves as Production Director. Tad Biernacki, is RWB Music Director and Conductor and, in this circumstance, kindly, match-maker. With costume design by Anne Armit and lighting design from Hugh Conacher, Jorden Morris' piece is partnered with RWB alumnus Peter Quanz's "Luminous", and audience favourite Mauricio Wainrot's "Carmina Burana" for an evening, (and one Sunday matinee), of classical and contemporary ballet that runs May 9 - 13, 2012 at Winnipeg's Centennial Concert Hall. It's a mixed program united as "Pure Ballet".

A pure talent and communicator in song, Allison Crowe, is invited to perform her piano and vocal version of "Hallelujah", a modern classic. First recorded by Crowe in 2003 for her CD "Tidings", this Leonard Cohen song has been covered more than 200 times - in a wide range of styles. Iconoclastically, free of mainstream ties and marketing, Crowe's version has steadily emerged among the most-enjoyed worldwide. A YouTube video of Allison Crowe performing "Hallelujah" live-in-the-studio has an audience of more than eight million people -  Acclaimed Hollywood director Zack Snyder tags it "beautiful", "sexy" and "romantic". The bi-coastal singer-songwriter, born in Nanaimo, BC, and now home in Corner Brook, NL, is honoured to deliver her passion for the song live to the RWB's lovers of "visible music".

Crowe enters fine musical company with those whose performances will also illuminate "The Doorway". Whether criss-crossing the country to visit hundreds of schools and inspire children, or expressing their humanitarian nature performing in Kenya and Dubai, dynamic Winnipeg duo "Keith and Reneé" (http://www.keithandrenee.com/) shine. The veteran pair make music of many genres, folk and country among them, that reach people via radio, tv, film and commercials. They penned "Good Year", theme of Manitoba's Homecoming 2010 and, fresh off a dream tour with entertainer Jann Arden, "KnR" bring to the Centennial's live stage their heartland take on "Bird on a Wire".

Alongside these performers, and recorded words and music of Leonard Cohen, the program includes an incandescent "Sisters of Mercy" as captured live on "Circle of Friends", a 1991 album by South Dakota-born, US prairie-raised musician, activist and pioneer Cris Williamson (http://criswilliamson.com). This was the 15th anniversary concert recording of Willamson's "The Changer and the Changed", an epochal album which went gold, (sales over 500,000), and is to indie and women's music what Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was to general pop in its day.

Info on "Pure Ballet: Fluid Motion Virtuosic Dance", location, ticket details and more is found @ http://www.rwb.org/pureballet

Allison Crowe follows up this exciting RWB engagement with a rare off-stage role - serving as Music Director for "Newfoundland Vinyl" - a rollicking spin through popular music's coming of age on "the rock" - presented in this Summer's Gros Morne Theatre Festival by Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador. A "Tidings Live" album and video documentary is in the works with film-maker Peter Buckle. These North American activities precede Allison Crowe's next European tour - featuring a concert return to Germany, Italy, England, Scotland+

Fuller details will be posted @ http://www.allisoncrowe.com

It's coming on the season to celebrate with one of the great voices in popular music.

Expect plenty of rocking holiday cheer, laced with overtones of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles and more when Allison Crowe delivers "Tidings". The 2011 edition of Crowe's annual holiday favourite begins in St. John's, NL, the eastern terminus of the Trans-Canada Highway, and wraps in Victoria, BC, the western terminus.

The internationally-acclaimed musician, born on Vancouver Island, and home in Newfoundland for years now, stirs together traditional Christmas carols and holiday favourites with an organic blend of rock, jazz, folk, gospel and soul. "Be prepared to be amazed," chimes ChristmasReviews.com Longtime NPR broadcaster Ross Hocker calls Allison Crowe's show, "The most honest, heartfelt, and directly intimate concert in my entire life."

Italian radio calls Allison Crowe "Una voce incredibile per una forza della natura."

As a performing artist, Crowe is akin, in ways, to the late, great, Swedish power-house soprano, Birgit Nilsson, about whom it's said "No record or CD could quite prepare a listener for the real thing, live in the opera house".

Tidings is Allison Crowe's melding of the sacred and secular in "songs of the season" and spirit. Some of the music is familiar repertoire, delivered in singular style. Some is not like anything customarily heard in a holiday-time concert.

Tidings viscerally surveys a musical terrain of carols - It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, In the Bleak Midwinter, What Child Is This, First Noel, Silent Night, O Holy Night - performed with rare artistry and passion, and emotive arrangements, alongside the modern canon of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Lennon/McCartney+, and Allison Crowe's original songs, (including the just-composed "Arthur", and the epic "Disease"), that draw on themes of faith, hope, sorrow, joy, redemption, transcendence and more from life's well.

First staged in 2003, Tidings is an exciting experience shared by music-lovers around the world. This holiday season, Allison Crowe, with some very special musical guests, brings Tidings to:

St. John's, NL - D.F. Cook Recital Hall - November 25

Corner Brook, NL - First United Church - December 2

Nanaimo, BC - St. Andrew's United Church - December 10 - Featuring: Christopher Wood; Raymond Salgado; Kiana Smith; Kaleigh Hargrove; Taylor Manns; Emily Blake & Guests to aid The Mind's Eye + Woodlands SS Band and Basketball programs

Vancouver, BC - St. Jame's Hall - December 11 - Featuring guest artist: Juniper Watters

Campbell River, BC - St. Peter's Anglican Church - Dec. 15 - Featuring: The Campbell River Childrens Choir with Director Barbara Prowse to aid Campbell River Hospice Society & CR Food Bank

Victoria, BC - Fairfield United Church - Dec. 17 (NB a shift from original date of Dec. 9) - Featuring guest artists: Haley Walker; & Billie Woods to aid Artemis Place, (girls' educational and life-skills), and HepCBC

On Thursday, December 22, you can join Allison Crowe in her birth-place of Nanaimo, B.C. for the "Light Up a Life" Sing-along - part of the campaign for Haven Society organized by the Old City Quarter Merchants.

Full details of the "Tidings" concerts and sing-along will be posted @ allisoncrowe.com

Playing her vintage upright-grand piano, at home in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada, Allison Crowe sings of love weighed through life and time.

"Arthur", the newest recording from musician Allison Crowe, is one-half of a double-A-side single release - along with "Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)" -- a guitar version of the Patty Griffin tune.

Rubenesque Records Ltd., Canada's most independently successful music label, celebrates its 10th anniversary with this characteristically passionate performance pairing.

http://music.allisoncrowe.com/track/arthur

Already a lover of American singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, Allison Crowe was introduced to Griffin's "Up to the Mountain" by Canadian rock and soul musician Bob Benvenuti when they performed at a Christmas "Tidings" concert together.

Here she performs the song live-in-the-studio - "Out of the Fog" in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.

Warmest thanks to the team behind this popular news and arts magazine - Michael Fisher, Television Producer, Bruce Lane, Camera - and all the OotF crew at Rogers television.

"Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)", a guitar version of the Patty Griffin song, and the newest recording from Allison Crowe, is one-half of a double-A-side single release - along with "Arthur".

Rubenesque Records Ltd., Canada's most independently successful music label, celebrates its 10th anniversary with this characteristically passionate performance pairing.

http://music.allisoncrowe.com/track/up-to-the-mountain-mlk-song

Allison Crowe releases a double-A-side single - two new song recordings available world-wide for enjoyment in audio and video formats.

In the terrestrial sphere, "Arthur" has its world premiere this afternoon on CBC Radio's "On the Go" program. Show Host Ted Blades promises to carry things "Up to the Mountain" next.

Blogger "Muruch" is helping Allison Crowe celebrate the music release, and 10th anniversary of Rubenesque Records Ltd. - with the online premiere of Allison's two newest song recordings. And, as a treat for the next couple of weeks, the music is a gift from Muruch

Over at "1 Heck of a Guy" the two song videos make their debut along with this explanation: "Allison Crowe has often been featured on this site, in part for her gorgeous voice and in part for her exquisite songwriting."

Both of those elements, DrHeck, says, are on display in this new release:

"Arthur" - Playing her vintage upright-grand piano, at home in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada, Allison Crowe sings of love weighed through life and time.

"Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)" - Already a lover of American singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, Allison Crowe's introduction to this Griffin tune came from Canadian rock and soul musician Bob Benvenuti when the two Canucks performed at a Christmas "Tidings" concert together. Crowe brings it on home with guitar and vocals - performing as her own Jordanaires for back-up.

Rubenesque Records Ltd., Canada's most independently successful music label, celebrates its tenth anniversary with this characteristically passionate performance pairing.

Exciting times - even in the rain! We aim to have Allison Crowe's double-A-side single available digitally before the end of this month. More news on this two song recording - "Arthur" / "Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)" coming in the next few days. Here's a look at the single cover art - photo by Allison!

Next month, August 23, marks the tenth anniversary of Allison's label, Rubenesque Records Ltd. Along with virtual cake and balloons, we'll make it a special celebration together :)

At the start of this millennium, Allison Crowe embarked from her Pacific Ocean home, Vancouver Island, to perform a pair of concerts in Seattle, Washington, at a “Worldwide Jammer Convergence” of Pearl Jam fans. There was no roadmap for her success.

Today, Crowe is an internationally-acclaimed and much-loved singer-songwriter. Readying for another season of touring, and creation of her eighth album/song collection, she’s navigating a life in music.

Ahead of the 20th century recording industry’s entry into the digital age, Allison Crowe emerges in a new DIY generation. Decades earlier, punk, and, resonantly, pop culture revolution in the 1960s, erupted. Then, institutionalized payola and greedy elements smothered music radio. “Company men”, as John Lennon labeled them, took over – on stage as well as in the boardroom.

Rock’s bold promise to squeeze your lemons was reconstituted in this new era - a branding pitch hot-blooded as ice-tea. In 2006, John Sebastian, jug-band music-maker, writer of classic songs for The Lovin’ Spoonful, tells The New York Times: "The industry has been in the corporate noose for so long, it doesn't even have a leg jiggle left. There's no one left saying, 'Wait we want to make art'."

Rock and roll spirit, magnificent and wild as rebellion, lives on - vital tendrils reaching out through the casement. On Allison Crowe’s path, classical and jazz roots meet with teenage influences Ani DiFranco, PJ, Tori Amos and Counting Crows. Independents DiFranco, Loreena McKennitt and Janis Ian show there is a way – and it’s different for each.

Coursing freely, Crowe’s real “story” is her immense creativity – talents and gifts of writing and musicianship, (voice, piano and guitar), which she shares openly. Communicating emotion, crossing over language, sex, religion, race, age and other dividers, performing original compositions and as interpreter.

Forming Rubenesque Records Ltd. to market her recordings, since 2003 Allison Crowe has released a series of seven albums/CDs singularly remarkable in its diversity and quality of writing and performance – and delivered epiphanies amid concert fun and excitement. (Testifying are music writers the world over – find a sampling below and more @ http://www.allisoncrowe.com/pressquotes.html)

"Soulful. Alive. Joyous. Grievous. Real, true, music is what I want to make," Crowe says. Embracing the web, she and her audience have found each other - big-time.

On Last.fm, the world's largest online music catalogue and recommendation site, (where her song tracks enjoy over 100,000 listeners and nearing 700,000 'scrobbles' / plays), Allison Crowe’s been voted by some very discerning music-lovers into the "Singer-Songwriter of the Week" group's Hall of Fame – joining Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Townes van Zandt, Carole King, Neil Young, Van Morrison, other legends, and a handful of younger artists. Crowe, 29, is the only singer-songwriter under 30 selected – closest her age in this august company is Conor Oberst (32) and Sufjan Stevens (35).

On Jamendo, the planet’s premiere platform for free music and a community of Creative Commons music authors, Crowe’s original songs have been played over one million times by 200,000 regular listeners. On YouTube, the video site which serves as a top music discovery forum, Crowe’s music videos have over 10 million, (un-bought and un-rigged), listens/views. Add one-million-plus plays and downloads of original music from her own website, and the totality represents a musical connection achievable in pre-internet times only by gold-to-platinum-selling acts with label muscle flexing major financial support.

For Allison Crowe, wholly-independent, this exposure also translates into sales, as people still want physical CDs, and, so far, more than 500,000 paid downloads/streams (via iTunes – and such ‘etailers’ as CD Baby, Amazon, Emusic, among others, which serve their own music-buying bases).

Bicoastal Crowe calls Corner Brook, NL, and Nanaimo, BC, home. Outside her native land, Canada, she’s especially popular in the USA, Europe, and, increasingly, Australia, New Zealand and South America. Running her own operations, it’s an incremental process to physically traverse the globe and perform. Bonds initiated online strengthen in the flesh. It’s the stuff of legend.

A sensation in the Village Hall, Durness, Scottish Highlands, just a few years ago, Allison Crowe’s on a bill with Carol Ann Duffy, currently Britain’s Poet Laureate, and the Royal Academy of Music Players under the Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Her set included Beatles' favourite “In My Life” - for members of the Lennon clan, local villagers, musicians and global celebrants come together for the "John Lennon Northern Lights Festival." Crowe’s latest European tour wrapped, this past October, in the birthplace of a nation, atop Germany’s fabled Harz Mountains. Medieval Quedlinburg, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, hosted Crowe who performed for an SRO crowd inside Blasiikirche, and an overflow audience circling outside the historic church.

Publicly, Dance Ensemble students at Lindenhurst High, New York, gambitsurya in Chennai, India, young folks ’round the world are singing and dancing to Allison’s music for their communities, for themselves. In the present semester, Christina, Polly, Jess, Jil, Tamanna, Shamima, Nilufa, and Sabina, high school and college students at disparate UK learning institutions have made Allison Crowe songs, “Skeletons and Spirits”, “This Little Bird”, and “Lisa’s Song”, course projects in Media and Video. In Hollywood, director Zack Snyder, (300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch), helming the reboot of the Superman movie series, tells ArtistDirect: "Right now, I've been trying to find a really good cover of 'Battle Hymn of the Republic.' I can't find one that I really like with all five verses, so that's a problem. I was going to call someone up like Allison Crowe and be like, 'Can you record a version of this?' That's how my brain works!”

Privately, families are paying their last earthly respects to loved ones accompanied by Crowe’s musical voice. Mothers are welcoming their newborns to this sound.

Music and more @ http://www.allisoncrowe.com

What people say about Allison Crowe:

"Una voce incredibile per una forza della natura." ~ Reset Radio (Italy)

"There are some voices that speak (or sing) for themselves. You know the
ones. Voices where it doesn’t matter what they sing. Voices where it doesn’t
really matter what instruments support them. Solomon Burke has such a voice.
Jeff Buckley had it. Allison Crowe has it too." ~ Ray Padgett, Cover Me
(USA)

"Canada's finest songwriter" ~ Stephen Thomas, We Write Lists (UK)

"Ever wonder what it would have been like to listen to a gifted
singer/songwriter from Saskatchewan in a small, intimate hall before she
became Joni Mitchell? Don't fret the missed opportunity. There's no need to
turn back the clock. Check out Allison Crowe." ~ Robert Reid, The Record
(Canada)

"Once famously described by the Vancouver Courier as possessing a style akin
to 'Elton John meets Edith Piaf', the Canadian singer-songwriter Allison
Crowe is renowned for her ability to blend control and melodrama." ~ MOJO
(UK)

"One of the best interpreters to come along since Joe Cocker" ~ Bob Bishop,
Editor, Paris Voice (France)

"J'ai rarement été bouleversée à ce point par une voix féminine. Pure comme
de la glace, puissante et même violente... qu'il est impossible de ne pas
mettre son coeur en jeu en l'écoutant... faîtes place à une virtuose nom de
Zeus!" ~ SplinterMuse (France)

"Ihre gestalteten Emotionen umfassen sowohl stürmische, dramatische
Prozesse, Wut, Verzweiflung, aber auch spielerischen Übermut und einen
unbändigen Lebenswillen. Im Kontext dazu stehen ihre zarten,
hingebungsvollen Empfindungen, eine Lyrik, in denen sie die breit gefächerte
Facette ihrer gesanglichen Begabung zum Klingen bringt." ~ Barbara
Kirchner-Babinecz, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung (Germany)

"the most honest, heartfelt, and directly intimate concert in my entire
life." ~ Ross Hocker, WGTE/NPR (USA)