CRITICAL PRAISE FOR "BED TIME"

"Gina Leishman´s bedtime stories aren´t like Mother Goose´s. Instead of singing baby to sleep, she enfolds us grown-ups in a warm nighty-night blanket which smells faintly of spilt cocktails and cigarette smoke. Her voice also curls through the air like the smoke from a cigarette left in an ashtray in some after hours jazz club..."

-- Stephen Fruitman,
Sonomu.net
Full Review

"Smoky jazz that creeps and slithers, weaves and winds around dark, deep textures, venturing into the highly-wooded territory of quirky chamber pop. With wispy vocals Leishman takes her listener beyond the expected and typical into hidden corners and shadowy alleys. Colorful intrumentation includes glasses and accordion, making for an album that smoothly winds between the eerie and the delicate. A distinctively vivid album."
--CD Baby

"...stripped down and spacious, these songs hover like ghosts and drift in eerie, suspended shadows... Perfect late night listening, melancholy, moody, elegant and rather enchanting, as well."
--Downtown Music Gallery
Full Review

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR KAMIKAZE GROUND CREW

"Their music is intriguing, haunting, occasionally hilarious, and irresistible."
- Larry Kelp, East Bay Express

" KGC's music yields pleasure on its own terms, much like that of The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Mothers of Invention, or Willem Breuker Kollektief, its bent but beautiful structures providing cover from the mainstream culture's hail of mediocrity."
- Derk Richardson, SF Bay Guardian
full review

 "What they bring together is not only a global vision and singular skills in composition and arranging, but a highly talented group of performers."
-- JAZZIZ magazine
full review

“..a group that really defines my idea of what 'jazz' should be, and that is it's heavily compositionally influenced.”
PULSE magazine
full review

"The Kamikaze Ground Crew, with saxes and accordion, was wild but grounded, taking us further into Berlioz's manic heart than most orchestras ever could."
Greg Sandow, Wall St. Journal (Berlioz Birthday Bash)

“wild but grounded”
- Greg Sandow, Wall St. Journal

“Excellent, genre-defying music.”
– amazon,com

“Tremendous musical chops and a terrific sense of play”
– Wine X

“Imagine Mingus, Carla Bley and Sun Ra sharing stories about Stravinsky in some Brooklyn bar.'
-Jazz Times

 “The Kamikaze outfit takes the high dive into a dangerously shallow tank shared by circus music and serious composition, and emerges victorious”
– SF Bay Guardian

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR GINA'S THEATRE COMPOSITIONS

"Mother Courage"

"Let's just rename this Gina Leishman Month. The composer has been busy, creating new scores for two music-heavy shows: Mother Courage at Berkeley Rep, and CalShakes' As You Like It at the Bruns. What's interesting is how in both cases she has composed with an ear not to the refined beauty of some of her earlier work — although the music is often lovely — but to something more raw (Courage) or earthy (As You Like It). The two shows couldn't be more different in their style and staging, yet in both Leishman's music gives them real people having real emotional reactions — anger, flirtation, longing, disdain."
 - East Bay Express

"a stunning and effective new score by Gina Leishman "
- Contra Costa Times

"Gina Leishman's songs...disjunct and sharp-edged, by turns harsh and achingly beautiful...honor the spirit of Brecht's composers, Paul Dessau and Kurt Weill [and] scored for the perfect Brecht ensemble: tuba, accordion and honky-tonk piano."  
-  ocregister.com

"She may have moved to New York 10 years ago, but the Bay Area will be hearing a lot from Gina Leishman this week"
Sam Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle
full article

“Burning Dreams”
opera in two acts, libretto by Julie Hebert and Octavio Solis, music by Gina Leishman
"The real star of Burning Dreams is Gina Leishman’s music. The piece is an opera, often atonal. it is sung throughout and accompanied by quirky instruments. Along with clarinets and saxes, there’s a charango, a surdo, a “naive trumpet” (which makes one wonder why) and Leishman’s trademark accordion. Leishman, who also scored the wonderful music for the Rep’s Red Noses in 1988, also plays a “glass armonica”, running her fingers over spinning glasses of water and creating ethereal resonances. The music (is) the real narrator of the story, the primary language..."
--Jeff Smith, San Diego Reader
full review

“Feast of Fools”
with Geoff Hoyle and Gina Leishman.
“....95 minutes of superb physical comedy punctuated by delightful musical mayhem and leavened with poignant, unspoken reflections on the human condition.... (a) completely silent comedy show. Silent, that is...except for the sublimely comic music - on piano, accordion, a wailing and popping saxophone and a melodious glass armonica - and performed by Leishman, who also growl-croons a delectably whiskey-voiced decadent Falling Apart Again” a la Dietrich. ...Leishman proves a superb comic foil as well as an inspired composer of the humorous accompanying score and a brilliant “orchestra of one”. In her elegant black satin gown (costumes by Mary Larson), she supports and footnotes Hoyle with wide-eyed Imogene Coca-like elastic expressions, periodically taking refuge in passionate attacks on the Moonlight Sonata or the martinis she concocts from her well-stocked, cleverly-disguised liquor cabinet.”
--Robert Hurwitt, S.F. Chronicle, Jan.29, 2003

"Karen Kohler's Kabarett Kollektif"
"Gina ... commands attention because she is very intense and interesting and because she exemplifies an aspect of European cabaret rarely experienced in New York."
--Barbara Leavy, Cabaret Scenes, March 2004
full review

MEET THE PRESS:
The following are all reviews of the same piece :
“The music is a joy to listen to.”
“.. goes up and down the scale like a scratching cat.”
“..does what the music should do: advances the mood of the performance without being obtrusive.”
“...the score is a great asset, mostly cool jazz...”
And my personal favourite:
”the music ... is for the most part horrible beyond the ability of words to express, with the pseudo-Weillian, pseudo-Sonheimian, echt-Schoenbergian melodic lines of the songs so sour as to set one’s teeth on edge unto the third and fourth generation.”

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR AUDIO BOOKS
see the PROJECTS for more

To The Lighthouse
It's wondrous to listen to a fine reading of a long-loved novel. Leishman makes masterly use of volume, timbre and resonance to distinguish between characters and draw us into the emotional swings and vibrations of the internal musings of each... Leishman also draws our attention to Woolf's poetic prose: her rhythms and images, her use of hard consonants in monosyllabic words in counterpoint to long, soft, dreamy words and phrases... This is a book that cannot be read—or heard—too often.
(Publishers Weekly)

The Great Fire
Virginia Leishman's narration, precise and thoughtful,....shimmers with an implicit energy. Though not really a war novel, this 2003 National Book Award winner is probably the finest study ever made of its aftermath, and Leishman's narration replicates the almost imperceptible movement from postwar hollowness to hope reborn.
(AUDIOFILE EARPHONE AWARD)

The Moorchild
Virginia Leishman's richly cadenced voice imbues this tale of a changeling child, caught in a hostile human world, with poignance, dignity, and magic.
(BOOKLIST: EDITOR'S CHOICE 1998)

Anyone requiring a demonstration of Leishman's ability to knit words into melody need only listen to her description of Saaski's discovery of the bagpipes; each word is given its own lilt, each phrase its own register, each sentence its due rhythm, creating a music as wild and strange as the tunes Saaski herself plays from the depths of her ancient being. Leishman is equal to this extraordinary book; no higher accolade is needed.
(ALA NOTABLE CHILDREN'S RECORDINGS 1999)

The Railway Children
Leishman has a British accent, appropriate to a novel set in England, and reads with a voice that is formal, yet sweet and appealing without being cloying. Her timing is impeccable, and her voice adds beauty and elegance to a lovely story … an absolute listening pleasure, and worth listening to again and again.
(AUDIOFILE EARPHONES AWARD)

Elementals
Leishman, a master of her art, has a beautiful voice, beautiful diction and a fine ear for tones. If you already like Byatt, you'll find this audio a treat.
(KLIATT)

Possession
"BEST AUDIOBOOKS OF 1999" selection (Library Journal)
Reader Virginia Leishman handles the foursome--today's critics, yesterday's writers--with intelligence and grace and does great credit to the sometimes demanding manuscripts Byatt includes in the story.... an outstanding audiobook
(AUDIOFILE)

The movie version of A.S. Byatt's Possession may have received mixed reviews, but the unabridged recording is cause for audio elation.
... I had trouble reading the novel, but found listening to Virginia Leishman's reading a 23-hour pleasure.
(BOOKPAGE AUDIO REVIEW)

The Brass Dolphin
...narrator Virgina Leishman excels. Her fine, textured reading turns an enjoyable, yet predictable, novel into a wonderful listening experience. Her intelligent use of inflection and shaded changes of tone keep the listener involved and committed to the characters... Leishman is a captivating talent.
(AUDIOFILE)

Mourning Ruby
Leishman's soft, skillful reading holds this complex work together. Her direct and forceful narration, with its rich, precise intonations, weaves Rebecca's fragments into an emerging tapestry.
(AudioFile)

The Matisse Stories
A.S. Byatt offers three stories that tantalize the senses... In narrator Virginia Leishman's oral interpretation, each of the sensory references becomes even more striking. Leishman is able to project the careful flow of conversation between characters with unusual subtlety. She uses inflections and pauses to reveal much about human nature. Through this sensitive narration, Byatt's stories are both soothing and provocative...
(CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR)

The Thrall’s Tale
Despite the relentless suffering of Katla, Leishman voices her so well that listening is irresistible, even in the darkest moments.
(AUDIOFILE)