IMN : Updates for Gabriel Kahane

The Last Magazine: Gabriel Kahane

IMN

May 3rd, 2013

from The Last Magazine

TLM10: GABRIEL KAHANE
By Jonathan Shia

Don’t try calling Gabriel Kahane a prodigy. That’s exactly what Andrew Solomon did in his encyclopedic nonfiction book Far from the Tree last year, featuring Kahane in a chapter overflowing with stories of child geniuses and other early-onset talents like fellow composer Nico Muhly, violinist Joshua Bell, and pianist Lang Lang, but Kahane is not having any of it. “I don’t actually know what his angle is,” he jokes of Solomon. “I was not a prodigy, I don’t think.”

But if Kahane was no boy wonder, he has become, at thirty-one, a composer and songwriter whose works are notable not only for their intricacy and nuance but also for their variety. In the past few years, Kahane has written orchestral works, chamber pieces, song cycles— notably Craigslistlieder, with text gleaned from, yes, that benighted Internet catch-all—two albums’ worth of folksy, guitar-driven “pop songs,” and a musical for the Public Theater in New York. So eclectic are his compositions, in fact, that when he mentions an upcoming tour through the Midwest, it’s unclear at first exactly what sort of music he’ll be playing.

Kahane grew up in upstate New York and then the Bay Area, the son of highly-acclaimed classical pianist and conductor Jeffrey Kahane, who Gabriel says was very hands-off in terms of his musical education. “I think he wanted me to find music on my own if I was going to do it,” he says. “He was always afraid of asserting too much pressure in any direction. Actually, when I transferred from the New England Conservatory to Brown as a sophomore, he expressed relief that I had left conservatory because he just felt like it was not the right atmosphere for me to flower as a person or a thinker or a musician.” Kahane credits his father with instilling him with the understanding that being a musician requires more than just perfect pitch and a knowledge of harmonic intervals, an attitude that he continues to adhere to. “He’s just always done whatever he’s most wanted to do creatively,” he says of the elder Kahane. “I think his biggest impact on me has been to provide a model of real artistic integrity and this idea that being a student of the world and a student of life in general makes a better artist than just sitting in a practice room for hours a day.”

To read the full article click here

Classic or pop, Gabriel Kahane is a masterful musician

IMN

April 22nd, 2013

From The Morning Call

Classic or pop, Gabriel Kahane is a masterful musician
by Steve Siegel

How do you label a guy who has composed a cycle of songs based on Craigslist personal ads, writes folksy pop sound collages that recall Sufjan Stevens, sings Schumann lieder in the dusky tones of a singer/songwriter, and is the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s first composer-in-residence?

You don’t.

Much to the delight of pop and classical audiences and to the confusion of music critics, composer/singer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane defies categorization. Kahane, 31, has written orchestral song cycles, musical theater pieces, produced pop albums, and composed piano sonatas. He composed his quirky set of eight “Craigslistlieder” in 2006, and was performing them in downtown New York City bars when they began to find their way into other singers’ recitals at places like Carnegie Hall. Suddenly, the perceived boundaries between pop and classical became less distinct for an entire generation of artists. Kahane has been on a roll ever since.

To read the full article click here

Gabriel Kahane performs at the Library of Congress

IMN

April 8th, 2013

from The Washington Post

Gabriel Kahane makes classical music jaunty, and, happily, no one seems to mind
By Anne Midgette

When singer-songwriter/composer Gabriel Kahane began to sing Britten into a mike Friday night at the Library of Congress, I assumed that some audience members would be horrified. For one thing, we classical-music aficionados, especially the voice-lovers, often wring our hands about the use of amplification. For another, Kahane sang in the slightly grainy, dusky tones of a singer-songwriter rather than the rounded, flowing ones of a lied singer. “I’m proposing that in concert music there’s another way of singing,” he had said to me in a recent interview, and another way of singing was what he offered: a direct, text-driven means of communication in a voice that was pleasantly expressive but disregarded the classical conventions of legato and vibrato and breath support.

I needn’t have worried. At the end of the night, the crowd jumped to its feet and gave Kahane and Timothy Andres, the pianist and composer with whom he performed, a standing ovation.

Classical audiences, in short, may be more ready for new approaches than you might think. Or maybe listeners just instinctively understood that what the two musicians were doing — direct, musical, natural — was a lot closer to the original spirit of a lot of this music than many more formal, conventional presentations.

To read the full article click here

Gabriel Kahane, a genre bender musician

IMN

March 29th, 2013

from The Washington Post

Gabriel Kahane, a genre bender musician
By Anne Midgette

“Craigslistlieder,” a song cycle from 2006, is not necessarily Gabriel Kahane’s best work. The 31-year-old composer, or singer-songwriter — let’s just stick with “musician” as the most accurate designation — has written piano sonatas, orchestral pieces, a pop album and even a musical about hipster artists living an alternative lifestyle in Brooklyn 70 years ago.

But this song cycle, built of eight texts taken from personal ads on Craigslist — and performed by the small company Urban Arias at the Mansion at Strathmore at the end of March — is his best-known work. Quirky and funny and abruptly poignant, with music tightly calibrated to the words and feelings behind them, it gives a good taste of the aesthetic of an artist who defies genres in the cause of making music that sticks with you.

Kahane is on a roll these days, rapidly becoming one of the most visible representatives of a generation of Brooklyn musicians who bring individual voices to many genres at once. He resists all labels — “indie-classical,” he says, “is a word I wish did not exist” — but whatever he does, he’s bringing a lot of it to Washington this month. His newest song cycle, “Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States,” the culmination of a residency with the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, will be performed at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on April 20. Before that, he’s giving a joint recital at the Library of Congress on April 5 with another composer/performer, the jazz pianist Timothy Andres, with music by everyone from Robert Schumann to Benjamin Britten to Thomas Ades to the two performers themselves. “I’m definitely interested in advocating for anyone’s music I can interpret,” Kahane says, calling Schumann “the proto-emo, deep-feeling forebear” of today’s singer/songwriters.

To read the full article click here

Gabriel Kahane Performs Live on WNYC

IMN

December 4th, 2012

from WNYC

Gabriel Kahane: A Little Bit Of Everything

A typical set from singer and pianist Gabriel Kahane might include a classical composition, an excerpt from his musical February House, and one of his pop songs. Kahane performs one of each in a stirring performance in the studio. Now, you can spend time and energy trying to figure out which is which, or you can do what Kahane does — and just enjoy the music wherever it comes from.

Kahane talks about 7 Middagh Street, the now-demolished Brooklyn Heights home that inspired February House. In the early 1940s, the Victorian building played host to a star-studded commune of art-world roomies, including poet W.H. Auden, composer Benjamin Britten and the novelist Carson McCullers. Kahane’s February House ran at the Public Theater earlier this year and spawned a cast recording released in October.

Listen to the performance here

REVIEW: Gabriel Kahane at Zankel Hall

IMN

October 29th, 2012

from The New York Times

Boundaries? Don’t Bother
Gabriel Kahane at Zankel Hall
By Steve Smith

Just off the coast of mainstream America is a land called Brooklyn, where life is devoted to creative pursuits, and cartographers are unemployed because residents — some native, but many settled in from far-flung origins — seem to reject the notion of boundaries. Gabriel Kahane — born in California in 1981 and currently residing in Ditmas Park — is emblematic of a growing Brooklyn aesthetic that renders moot distinctions among so-called high and low forms of art. In a sense his “February House,” a recent musical-theater work concerning a Brooklyn home shared by Benjamin Britten, W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers and Gypsy Rose Lee, posits a prehistory for his milieu.

But Mr. Kahane understands that outside Brooklyn much of the world still relies on maps to determine location, whether geographical or aesthetic. For his first Carnegie Hall solo showcase, mounted on Thursday evening in Zankel Hall, he thoughtfully divided his program into four separate but roughly equal territories that provided a thorough overview of the State of Kahane.

In “Come On All You Ghosts,” the three-part song cycle that opened the concert, Mr. Kahane set poetry by Matthew Zapruder for baritone and string quartet. Mr. Zapruder’s verse — a learned, attentive everyman’s train of thought — couches subtle profundities among mundane observations.

Mr. Kahane’s interpretation mixes pop-song directness and amplified singing with string writing that attains a whorled density and includes an embedded reference to a Thomas Adès piece. Mr. Kahane’s smoky, earnest baritone suited both the words and their setting, and the string quartet Brooklyn Rider was strikingly alert to matters of nuance and mood.

Read the full review here

February House Cast to Celebrate Gabriel Kahane's Album Release

IMN

October 8th, 2012

From Playbill.com

February House Cast to Celebrate Album Release With Joe’s Pub Concert
By Adam Hetrick

Cast members from The Public Theater production of February House, including Kacie Sheik, Julian Fleisher and Stanley Bahorek, will reunite at Joe’s Pub Oct. 16 to celebrate the cast album release of the Gabriel Kahane musical.

February House was staged by Davis McCallum (Water By the Spoonful, Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue, Sex Lives of Our Parents) at the Public Theater last spring. Andy Boroson was musical director. The cast album will be released Oct. 16 on the StorySound label.

In addition to Sheik, Fleisher and Bahorek, the 7 PM concert will feature Kristen Sieh, Erik Lochtefeld, A. J. Shively, Ken Clark and Stephanie Hayes.

Based on the Sherill Tippins biography “February House: The Story of W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Wartime America,” the musical incorporates elements of classical operetta, jazz, musical comedy and modern folk-pop.

To read more click here.

Gabriel Kahane Makes Carnegie Hall Recital Debut

IMN

September 10th, 2012

from Broadway World

Gabriel Kahane Makes Carnegie Hall Recital Debut

Gabriel Kahane will return to Carnegie Hall on April 27, 2013, this time in Stern Auditorium. It will be another world premiere: a concerto for himself and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, with which he has served as composer-in-residence for two seasons.

In addition to his concertizing, Kahane will release the original cast recording of his acclaimed musical February House on October 16, 2012. Based on the book of the same name by Sherill Tippins, February House tells the true story of Harper’s Bazaar editor George Davis’s attempts to found an artist commune in Brooklyn Heights during World War II. Among the many boarders he collected were modernist poet W. H. Auden, burlesque dancer (and best-selling crime novelist) Gypsy Rose Lee, composer Benjamin Britten, tenor Peter Pears, political activist Erika Mann, and novelist Carson McCullers. The musical had successful runs at both New York’s Public and New Haven’s Long Wharf Theaters this spring.

Gabriel Kahane has established himself as a leading voice among a generation of young composers redefining music for the 21st century. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times for “an all around dazzling performance” in his orchestral debut of the premiere of his song cycle Orinoco Sketches, with John Adams and the Los Angeles Philharmonic last season, Kahane’s work defies classification. This season sees appearances at the University Musical Society of Ann Arbor, the Carolina Performing Arts Center, the Library of Congress, and dates with the Alabama Symphony, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. His rich and focused sophomore album, Where are the Arms, featured collaborations with Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Antony and The Johnsons, The National), Casey Foubert (Sufjan Stevens, Richard Swift, Pedro The Lion), and Matt Johnson (Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, St. Vincent), in eleven intricate and literate songs. Launched by his 2006 song cycle Craigslistlieder, Kahane has been commissioned by, among others, Carnegie Hall, Kronos Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Caramoor Festival. As a theater composer, he has received commissions from the Signature Theater in Arlington, VA and the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. An avid chamber musician, Kahane has performed with such artists as Alisa Weilerstein, Jeremy Denk, Jonathan Biss, and the Calder Quartet. A recipient of multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Corporation of Yaddo, Kahane makes his home in Brooklyn, New York, in close company with a century-old piano and many books.

Shara Worden’s voice and arresting live performances have left audiences thunderstruck from the Sydney Opera House to Lincoln Center to the House of Blues. She’s performed under the experimental-pop moniker My Brightest Diamond for the last seven years and frequently collaborates with Bryce Dessner (The National), Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Laurie Anderson and The Decemberists. She received a degree in Opera at the University of North Texas, and released three albums before joining the rank of Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoisemakers. Her most recent album, All Things Will Unwind, draws inspiration from her new home Detroit.

The adventurous, genre-defying string quartet Brooklyn Rider combines a wildly eclectic repertoire with a gripping performance style that is attracting fans and drawing critical acclaim from classical, world, and rock critics. NPRcredits Brooklyn Rider with “recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” Born out of a desire to use the rich medium of the string quartet as a vehicle for communication across a large cross section of history and geography, Brooklyn Rider is equally devoted to the interpretation of existing quartet literature and to the creation of new works. The musicians have worked with such compeers as Derek Bermel, Lisa Bielwa, Ljova, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, Jenny Scheinman, and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, and they also regularly perform pieces written or arranged by members of the group. Their first two albums, Passport andDominant Curve, made NPR’s year end round-ups. The member of the group have also participated extensively in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble.

Read the full article “here”: http://broadwayworld.com/article/Gabriel-Kahane-Makes-Carnegie-Hall-Recital-Debut-1025-20120910#ixzz266GryHre

Gabriel Kahane performs in Aspen

IMN

August 17th, 2012

The Aspen Times

Gabriel Kahane performs in Aspen
By Stewart Oksenhorn

Cycling through songs, Ives, theater, guitar, etc.

ASPEN — In his solo performance Thursday at Belly Up Aspen, Gabriel Kahane plans to perform what he calls a “survey of songs” — tunes by the 18th-century Viennese composer Franz Schubert and the current rapper Cee Lo Green, by the early 20th-century Broadway writer Jerome Kern and the current producer and songwriter Van Dyke Parks, whose list of collaborators includes the Beach Boys, Fiona Apple and Bonnie Raitt. Kahane isn’t out to prove how wide-ranging his tastes and talents are, but something like the opposite; he intends to illuminate connections among the composers of different times and places.

“It’s almost like a live mix tape at the piano, to demonstrate how these songs relate to one another, whether they were written in Austria in the 1820s or in 1972 in Los Angeles. It’s as diverse a repertoire as possible and seeing how these go together,” Kahane said.

Last summer, when he performed in Harris Hall as part of the Aspen Music Festival, Kahane’s concert featured his 2006 song cycle “Craigslistlieder,” with text taken from ads on Craig’s List; songs he had written more in a singer-songwriter style; and “Dichterliebe,” the prominent song cycle by Schumann. At the time, Kahane said something similar about wanting to highlight the comonalities between music of different eras.

“I think you connect right from ‘Dichterliebe’ to Bright Eyes,” he said, referencing the contemporary indie rock band led by singer-songwriter Conor Oberst.

Read the full article here.

Bravo Composer-in-Residence Gabriel Kahane Returns to Vail

IMN

August 2nd, 2012

from Vail Daily

Bravo Composer-in-Residence Gabriel Kahane Returns to Vail
By Rachel Seiden

Bravo Music Festival presents second Silver Oak Series Wednesday night; Kahane will perform with the Calder String Quartet

VAIL — In the second night of Bravo Music Festival’s Silver Oaks Series, Bravo welcomes the Calder Quartet and Gabriel Kahane to the program in addition to the three all-star pianists from Tuesday night’s program — Anne-Marie McDermott, Pedja Muzijevic and Stephen Prutsman.

This is the first year of the Silver Oaks Series. In addition to varied programs that juxtapose contemporary music with its roots in the older classical traditions, this series features complimentary appetizers provided by top-rated local restaurants and wine from Silver Oak and Twomey.

Kahane is known not only his concert works, but also as a singer/songwriter and musical theater composer. Since receiving international critical acclaim for his fresh and innovative composition “Craislistlieder,” Gabriel Kahane has risen to prominence as a veritable force of musical composition and performance.

Tonight’s concert features an encore performance of his 2011 Bravo commission, “Come On All You Ghosts.” The work is a setting of three poems by contemporary American poet Matthew Zapruder, selected from his collection of the same name. Scored for string quartet and baritone, the composer himself will perform with the Calder String Quartet.

“It is rare for an audience to be presented with the same work, with the inclusion of the composer himself into the performance twice over the span of two years,” said artistic administrator Jacqueline Taylor. “Composer Gabe Kahane is a driving force of the new music scene and to have him back this year to perform in both his own work and a singing Schubert and Ives songs is a wonderful treat.”

Additional highlights of tonight’s program include Ives and Schubert songs as well as Schumann’s Quintet in E-flat Major for Piano and Strings.

Gabriel Kahane spoke about his music, life and his time here in Vail.

Vail Daily: As someone who has footholds in many different facets of the music world, including musical theater, contemporary classical and indie pop, how do you approach writing for each genre? Do you have a different head space or setting you like to find yourself in to compose?

Gabriel Kahane: I think the constant in each of these pursuits is the desire to stimulate the audience emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. So while the particular musical language that I’m writing in changes from piece to piece, the concerns that I have artistically remain the same.

Read the full article here

Gig Alert: Suzanne Vega and Gabriel Kahane

IMN

July 25th, 2012

from WNYC

Gig Alert: Suzanne Vega and Gabriel Kahane
By Monika Fabian

Since emerging in the 1980s, the singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega has earned a reputation for using New York City as her muse on songs like “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner,” and in her recent play “Carson McCullers Talks About Love.”

The pop icon is joined by Gabriel Kahane at the River to River Festival on Tuesday night. Kahane, a singer, pianist and composer from California, released his self-titled debut album in 2008. Since then, he has become known for his catholic interests and prowess, and wide-ranging compositions that include concert works, musicals and indie-pop, folk and rock songs.

Vega and Kahane share a stage with Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang and Queens Poet Laureate Paolo Javier at Poetic City 2012 at River to River Festival in Rockefeller Park. The event unites wordsmiths of song and prose to celebrate the “power of well-crafted word.”

Ahead of the fete, download Suzanne Vega’s 1984 hit “Tom’s Diner” from her LP, Close-Up, Vol. 2: People & Places, and watch her recent Soundcheck performance of “Gypsy” in this video:

Playing on Tuesday at the River to River Festival (Rockefeller Park, River Terrace and Warren Street, Battery Park City)

Read the full article and watch footage here

Gabriel Kahane and Seth Bockley Talk Communal Music

IMN

June 20th, 2012

from Slant

February House Composer Gabriel Kahane and Book Writer Seth Bockley Talk Communal Music
By Gerard Raymond

February House, the new musical currently playing downtown at the Public Theater, marks composer-lyricist Gabriel Kahane and book writer Seth Bockley’s first venture into musical theater. The two men, both 30, pursued independent career paths since they first met as students at Brown University: Kahane as a singer-songwriter and composer of concert works and Bockley as a playwright and director. For their first musical together, Kahane and Bockley drew inspiration from the historical confluence of an extraordinary group of artists who made a home for themselves in a dilapidated house in Brooklyn Heights during the early years of WWII.

The curious experiment in communal living was instigated by 34-year-old George Davis, who at the time was fiction editor for Harper’s Bazaar. Davis persuaded a talented, eclectic bunch to move into the house at number 7 Middagh Street, among them English writer W. H. Auden, already an established poet of distinction, who moved in with his young boyfriend, aspiring poet Chester Kallman; up-and-coming British composer Benjamin Britten, who moved in with Peter Pears, the English tenor who remained his lifelong companion; Southern novelist Carson McCullers, who had recently achieved major success with her debut novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; and, most intriguingly, burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, who wrote a bestselling crime novel, The G-String Murders, during her stay at the house in Brooklyn. The artists were in their 20s and 30s at the time, with McCullers, the youngest at 23 and Auden the eldest at 33.
The saga of this volatile mix of young artistic sensibilities, all at crucial points in their careers, is documented in a nonfiction work by Sherill Tippins, titled February House, the name given to the dwelling by writer Anaïs Nin because many of the residents had birthdays in February. We recently caught up with Kahane and Bockley to chat about February House, a musical based on Tippins’s book.
Gerard Raymond: February House certainly features a fascinating group of people. Was there something in particular that drew you to this material?

Gabriel Kahane: What spoke to me about the work as a theater piece is that our three protagonists—George Davis, Carson McCullers, Wystan Auden—represented a theme where we found a contemporary resonance. For Carson McCullers there was this idea of a coming-of-age story and the crippling effect of overnight success. I read Sherill’s book in 2006, when I was 25, and so I really got the sense of resonance there.

Auden, of course, had been profoundly political in the 1930s, up until the beginning of the WWII. He lost his political will after the Spanish Civil War. When I read the book, we were very much at war in Iraq and there were a lot of progressives being kind of idiotic in public and not really giving particular intellectual grace to the anti-war movement. I started to understand how someone like Auden could have great political convictions, have the right ideas in mind and yet not want to associate with what he thought was this intellectually feeble progressive movement. Also having marched against the Iraq War in 2003 and being amid the sweat and stink of people chanting really idiotic slogans like, “Bush is Hitler,” “Jews are Nazis“—all this polemical bullshit—that could really turn you off from wanting to advocate for something you believe in deeply.

Seth Bockley: And there’s this role that a poet, especially Auden, had in 1940, which is comparable with Bob Dylan in the 1960s, which is the kind of expectations associated with fame—that you had to ally yourself with the important issues of the day. That pressure was enormous and I think both artists had a certain period when they resisted that identity quite strongly. This is the moment for Auden where he tries to resist because he was so disenchanted by the virtuous left crusaders in the Spanish Civil War.

Read the full article here

'February House' Offers Glimpse at '40s Artist Collective

IMN

May 27th, 2012

from Star-Ledger

‘February House’ offers glimpse at ’40s artist collective
By Ronnie Reich

A firestorm of art and politics? A bacchanalia in which creative types indulge in affairs and gin? A moldy dive in serious need of an exterminator?

February House — a 1940s Brooklyn artist collective that housed writer Carson McCullers, poet W.H. Auden and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee — is all of that and more in a new musical of the same name at the Public Theater.

Based on a 2005 book by Sherrill Tippins, the show also marks an important turn for composer and lyricist Gabriel Kahane.
“I identified, as someone in my mid-20s, with the experiences these luminaries had five decades earlier, a couple miles from where I live,” Kahane says, “in particular, the coming of age story of Carson McCullers, in the way that overnight success can be really detrimental to artists.”

He quickly, modestly backtracks — he doesn’t mean to put himself in that kind of company.

But Kahane, now 31, has already made a name for himself as a composer and songwriter with a strikingly original voice who manages sophistication and accessibility, wit and thoughtfulness.

Best known for “Craigslistlieder,” a 2006 set of art songs based on a certain website, he’s had orchestral commissions and released a pop album. And “February House,” which has a book by Seth Bockley, has been compared to Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George.”

His father is pianist Jeffrey Kahane, and Gabriel grew up admiring Johannes Brahms and Alban Berg. But he also looks to “the psychological rigor and insight” of artists like Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell.

“In the pop realm, I have always been drawn to people who are able to do the confessional thing but transcend the navel-gazing quality of it,” he says.

Like fan fiction for the liberal arts set, the show centers on a boardinghouse where editor George Davis tended to his somewhat more illustrious charges, nurturing them as relationships soured, nudging them to work on new projects and providing plenty to look at by way of dress.

Perhaps more than any of his housemates, Davis is vulnerable and lonely beneath his veneer of high camp. But each seems to be looking for a place to call home and a place to escape. And as World War II rages across the Atlantic, they grapple with their responsibilities.

REVIEW: When Musicals Whisper Rather Than Shout

IMN

May 25th, 2012

from NPR

‘February House’: When Musicals Whisper Rather Than Shout
By Mark Blankenship

I’ll always love big musicals. Shows like Hairspray and Anything Goes just want to make me happy, and if they don’t change my life, then so what? There are worse things than smiling for two hours while 35 hotties nail a synchronized tap number on the prow of a boat.

But sometimes, I love a musical that makes me come to it. Instead of singing in my face, a show like that whispers in my ear, giving me a private message to consider on the way home.

And February House is whispering right now at the Public Theater. Strange and dense and heartbreaking, it will never address an audience of millions, but it has lovely things to say.

The subject is an irresistible bit of history: In 1940, fiction editor George Davis invited fellow artists to live with him in a communal house in Brooklyn. His flatmates included the author Carson McCullers, the composer Benjamin Britten, the poet W.H. Auden, and even the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Just imagine a typical day in that house: All those brilliant people trying to manage their talent, but also trying to pay the telephone bill and make coffee before noon.

For February House composer Gabriel Kahane and book writer Seth Bockley, the commune is an experiment in making a family. In one way or another, all the characters hope the house — and the group — can solve their problems. Auden (Erik Lochtefeld) wants Brooklyn to be a paradise where he and his twentysomething lover Chester (A.J. Shively) can avoid the problems of insecure age and reckless youth. Carson (Kristen Sieh) wants to trade her abusive marriage for a liberated life of booze and sexual freedom. And George, poor George (Julian Fleisher), wants to be everyone’s mother and father. He wants this ad hoc dormitory to replace his loneliness and sense of failure.

The musical’s towering achievement is how carefully it draws each character’s desires. Bockley’s elegant, allusion-packed script suggests a hundred echoes for every action, hinting at motives and histories that we can understand without literal explanations. It’s obvious, for instance, that George has special affection for Carson, that he sees her as a wounded, inspiring bird who needs protection. But there’s never a grand speech where George declares his loyalty. We just glean it from the way he brings her food, the way he jumps to her defense, and the way he falters when she leaves the nest.

The the full article here

REVIEW: Gabriel Kahane's February House at the Public Theater

IMN

May 22nd, 2012

When Carson McCullers explores her own mind these days on a stage at the Public Theater, the sound of a banjo goes with her. Now a banjo might seem too obvious a choice for the musical underlining of the thoughts of a Southern writer adrift in the North. But then you haven’t heard the banjo music composed by Gabriel Kahane for “February House,” the very literary new musical that opened on Tuesday night at the Public Theater.

It’s a far twang from “My Old Kentucky Home” or “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Fragmented and dissonant, full of fragile melody and tensile strength, this music, played by Andy Stack, evokes the cracked-glass lyricism of McCullers’s prose. And when Kristen Sieh, the haunting actress portraying McCullers, lifts her reedlike voice in wondering song, you may feel for this long-dead writer what Carson says she feels when she visits the freaks at Coney Island: an ineffable sense of communion.

It’s the music that makes the magic in “February House,” the account of an experiment in communal living in the early 1940s that sounds like a culture groupie’s fever dream, glittering with boldface names. The clan that, for one improbable season, shared bath water and bread in a Victorian house in Brooklyn Heights included two immortal gay couples: W. H. Auden (Erik Lochtefeld) and his young lover, Chester Kallman (A. J. Shively); and the composer Benjamin Britten (Stanley Bahorek) and the singer Peter Pears (Ken Barnett).

Also in the mix, assembled by the editor and aesthete George Davis (Julian Fleisher), are Erika Mann (Stephanie Hayes), the artist daughter of Thomas, and — go figure — Gypsy Rose Lee (Kacie Sheik). History has it that Paul and Jane Bowles were also part of the ménage, but the creators of “February House” may have figured they already had enough celebrities for one musical.

They were right. Directed by Davis McCallum and written by Seth Bockley (book) and Mr. Kahane (songs), “February House” may aspire to be a fantastical portrait of an alternative family, of the tumult, tension and tenderness generated by a gaggle of geniuses under one roof. But the show and its appealing cast are at their best when the focus is on individual artists who feel alone, even among their own, and hear uncommon melodies that no one else hears.

Read the full article here

Confirmed Tourdates As Of

IMN

July 20th, 2013: Dre Wapenaar Pavilion, Mass MoCA North Adams, MA USA [Gabriel Kahane & Rob Moose Duo]