April 4, 2008: Alina Simone performs songs from her forthcoming release, “Everyone Is Crying Out to Me, Beware,” an inspired album of covers of the glasnost-era Siberian punk poet Yana Stanislavovna Dyagileva. Known as Yanka, this remarkable songwriter, who had a yearning voice and favored rebellious lyrics, grew up in Novosibirsk, hooked up with the Siberian punk scene in 1985, and died mysteriously six years later, at the age of twenty-four. Simone has done a great service in bringing these treasures to non-Russian audiences. (Yanka’s recorded output included just twenty-nine original songs, all of which circulated on samizdat cassettes.) Simone’s innovative versions reveal her many similarities to her heroine—most prominently, her haunting voice. The greatest difference is in the presentation. Yanka’s sound was spare and gritty, driven mainly by her acoustic guitar. Simone’s arrangements are fleshed out with trumpet, viola, slide guitar, and bajo sexto.