The Little Commie Girl

On Friday and Saturday, November 18 and 19, at 6 p.m., The Church in Sag Harbor will host back-to-back concerts of “The Little Commie Girl: One Story, 15 Songs” curated and performed by singer Sanda Weigl with Shoko Nagai on accordion and piano.

The performance creates a timeline of Weigl’s extraordinary life and career — featuring Romanian folk tunes and songs by Kurt Weill, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Edith Piaf, Nina Simone and Luz Casal, all layered with soul, jazz and avant-garde precision.

Born in Bucharest, Romania, Weigl moved to Berlin where she was immersed in the theater traditions of the Berliner Ensemble. Weigl first achieved fame as a teenage member of one of East Germany’s most popular rock bands. After publicly denouncing Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, she was sentenced to two years forced labor in an East Berlin factory and then expelled to the West where she worked in music and theater throughout Europe with The Berliner Ensemble, Schiller Theater, Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, Nina Hagen, The Alexander Balanescu String Quartet London and many others.

For over 20 years, Weigl has presented her singular interpretations of the folk and Roma songs of her childhood, the Brecht-Weill catalog, the Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen songbook, German medieval minnesinger repertoire, the German Weimar Cabaret songbook and vast repertoire to critical acclaim throughout the United States, Mexico, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Austria, Israel, U.K. and her native Romania. She has performed at the Pina Bausch Festival, the Nobel Prize for Literature celebration, the Monterey International Festival, the Ruhr Triennale, the JVC Jazz Festival in New York, the Ringling International Festival, the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau, Germany and dozens of other festivals and venues around the world.

Pianist, accordionist and composer Shoko Nagai is a versatile musical artist who improvises and performs with world-renowned musicians and composes original scores for films and live performances. Whether she is performing Klezmer, Balkan or experimental music, Nagai is a charismatic presence onstage, who hypnotizes audiences with her intense focus and virtuoso sound. A veteran of the New York downtown music scene, she performs with John Zorn, Erik Friedlander, Marc Ribot, Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto), Satoshi Takeishi, Elliot Sharp, Sanda Weigl and many exceptional performers.

Tickets for “The Little Commie Girl: One Story, 15 Songs” are $40 at thechurchsagharbor.org. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. both nights. The Church is at 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor.