Gabriel Kahane Comes to Town

Gabriel Kahane. Photo courtesy of Present Music.

Present Music will close the 2022-23 season Wednesday and Thursday with an intimate coffeehouse vibe featuring acclaimed songwriter/composer Gabriel Kahane. The Jan Serr Studio at Kenilworth Square East will be configured to place the singer near the center of the room, bringing the audience closer.

Writing personal music with introspective lyrics has been a personal journey for Kahane. His highly original works reflect a commitment to observation. In late 2019, as the United States was embroiled in a chaotic presidential campaign and a society defined by its schizophrenic relationship with a computer-connected society. Kahane decided to pull back from it all. He did not drop out, he unplugged. He spent a year off the internet.

In an extensive interview with Kahane, writer Mariel Fechik observed, “When the pandemic began four months into the experiment, Kahane considered giving up amidst a forced cross-country move and obvious global terror. But something told him to continue, and what began as a project that was intended to force Kahane into conversations with strangers morphed into one that forced him into conversations with himself.”

The result was an introspective album, Magnificent Bird. His reflections on life range from the mundane to deep retrospection. The tracks on that album sing of grief, nostalgia, shame, and salvation: a portrait of daily life in the roiling chaos of the 21st century. Fechik summarizes; “Over the span of ten songs, Kahane people-watches from his porch, revels in rainfall after the devastating Oregon wildfires, makes coffee, ponders professional jealousy, and attends his grandmother’s virtual shiva.”

In the interview with Fechik, Kahane explains, “So the sense of the mundane was, if I felt like writing about making coffee, I was gonna write about making coffee. Of course, the world was going to intrude on writing about making coffee. That’s what interests me: the juxtaposition of generalized, ambient terror and the mundane, which is how I think most people go about their lives all the time.”

Kahane will include 21 songs, many not recorded, with storytelling reflecting on that experience. While his album features guitar and occasionally piano accompaniment, he has rearranged many songs for a string quartet for this Present Music concert. Present Music musicians performing with Kahane include violinists Ilana Setapen and Eric Segnitz, violists Erin Pipal, and cellists Adrien Zitoun.

Kahane’s style is relaxed. This video is typical of the Magnificent Bird tracks. The audio of the entire album is online. What are the legacies of this unique performer? Kahane blends the poetic sense of Bob Dylan, the exploration-of-anything of Jerry Seinfeld, the introspective banter of Arlo Guthrie, and the return to basic folk of the Punch Brothers. Critic Alex Ross wrote in 2019 that “Kahane’s work…is, first and foremost, an exercise in lyric beauty. He sings in a warm, resonant, melancholic baritone, which coasts upward into a plaintive falsetto. He plays the piano with a poetic touch…and his music is suffused with idiosyncratic, enriched tonal harmony…he is one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day.”

Kahane’s musical sophistication may be inherited from his father, classical pianist Jeffrey Kahane. Bridging folk and classical worlds, Gabriel Kahane currently serves as Creative Chair of the Oregon Symphony.

A popular guest of Present Music, Carla Kihlstedt, will offer an opening set. Her personal and quirky performances and songwriting experience parallels Kahane. Classically trained, she has written both for classical ensembles and her own small bands. She was invited to play the opening set for the premiere release of Kahane’s album in Boston last year.

Kihlstedt won over Present Music audiences last June with a charming song cycle based upon a Edward Gorey’s quirky children’s book, 26 Little Deaths. Present Music commissioned that work and has recorded the work for release in the next year.

Kihlstedt was also a keen observer of life during the pandemic, “It’s so quiet… Unbelievable the sound of the world without us. I hold my breath… I can feel the stillness in my bones — Awkward, peaceful, a comfort like death. Build a cage for my lonely heart.” Hear her performance of Without Us on YouTube.

For this concert she’s planning a retrospective of her varied career, accompanying herself on violin. Kihlstedt returned to the Present Music stage this April.

Present Music will set the Jan Serr Studio for a performance in the round. The concerts Wednesday, May 31, and Thursday, June 1, will begin at 7:30 pm. The Studio is perched on top of the repurposed factory building, the UW-Milwaukee Kenilworth Square East, 2155 Prospect Avenue. Floor-to-ceiling windows offer a view of the city.

Tickets may be purchased online. A frequent recent feature, a live stream option, is not available for this concert. A parking garage at 1915 E Kenilworth Place serves the complex.

Milwaukee Opera Theater is co-sponsoring the concerts.