Acclaimed Songwriter / Composer Gabriel Kahane to Perform Landmark “Magnificent Bird” Album Live With Present Music

Milwaukee, Wis. (April 19, 2023) – Multi-genre phenom composer/singer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane will perform an expanded performance version of his introspective album “Magnificent Bird” joined by a Present Music string quartet at 7:30 p.m. May 31 and June 1 at the Jan Serr Studio, 2155 N. Prospect Ave.

The acclaimed 2022 album, hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a gorgeous, intimate collection of ten musical snapshots,” documents the final month of a year the composer spent off the internet. Shuttling between the quotidian mundane and a series of overlapping global crises, he sings of grief, nostalgia, shame and salvation: a portrait of daily life in the roiling chaos of the 21st century. The record features numerous collaborators, including Andrew Bird, Chris Thile, Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw.

Kahane will perform as a vocalist, guitarist and pianist with a Present Music string quartet, and include 21 songs and storytelling to illustrate the year’s journey. Present Music musicians performing with Kahane include Ilana Setapen (violin), Eric Segnitz (violin), Erin Pipal (viola) and Adrien Zitoun (cello). Kahane wrote the songs and arrangements that he and the string quartet will perform.

“This will be, by the very nature of the subject matter, a more intimate experience for Present Music audiences,” Present Music Co-Artistic Director Eric Segnitz said. “The span of a year’s journey deprived of the internet, and the way in which the real world and honest human values reassert themselves, are very relatable coming off the pandemic.”

“Gabriel Kahane is a performer who holds an audience in the palm of his hand – truly one of the most singular and courageous talents of our day. It’s a fitting and, as always, unexpected way for Present Music to close its epic 41st season.”

The concerts mark the second collaboration between Kahane and Present Music, having teamed up to perform his song cycle “For the Union Dead” at Turner Hall Ballroom in 2009.

The New Yorker has proclaimed Kahane “one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day.” Kahane’s creative collaborators include artists ranging from Phoebe Bridgers, Paul Simon, and Sufjan Stevens, to Pekka Kuusisto, Anthony McGill, and Attacca Quartet. His prose has appeared in The New Yorker online and in The New York Times; a wide-ranging newsletter “Words and Music,” can be accessed at gabrielkahane.substack.com. The recipient of a 2021 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Kahane recently relocated to Portland, OR, where he lives with his family and has just begun his second term as Creative Chair of the Oregon Symphony.

Tickets are for the two performances are available at https://www.presentmusic.org/events. The concerts are produced in cooperation with Milwaukee Opera Theater.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.