Although Gabriel Kahane may have grown up in a world of classical music — his father, Jeffrey Kahane, is a pianist and was music director of the Santa Rosa Symphony — the singer and multi-instrumentalist transcends genres in his hit CD The Ambassador, which offers a musical tour of Los Angeles through architectural references in a diverse cycle of songs. Next month, Kahane makes a return to the Bay Area to perform songs from the album along with other works from his new recording with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider on Friday, January 29 at 7:30 p.m. in Bing Concert Hall.

Hailed as “the future of chamber music” by Strings magazine, the eclectic quartet and their fellow Brooklynite will collaborate on a program that showcases two sides of Kahane’s work: that as a songwriter and a composer of instrumental music.

Performing solo and with the quartet, the singer will offer selections from The Ambassador, a moving ode to the City of Angels that references specific building addresses with a range of characters and scenarios spanning from the 1940s to the present. Kahane, who was born in California, explained in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: “I had this growing affection for the city, and I wanted to work through it artistically. For me, L.A. had been the relative I didn't know very well and hadn't made the effort — the second cousin I saw every five years at the family reunion.”

One of the songs, “Bradbury (304 Broadway),” provides the source material for a piece entitled Bradbury Studies — a loving deconstruction for string quartet that was dedicated to Brooklyn Rider. “The ‘Bradbury’ of both titles refers to the iconic and sui generis fin-de-siècle building in downtown L.A.,” writes Kahane, “which is prominently featured in the 1982 cult classic Blade Runner, a film whose plot, setting, and characters provided great inspiration for the original song.”

Bradbury Studies will be featured on Brooklyn Rider’s new recording with Kahane, The Fiction Issue, his first album of chamber music due out in February. The title is based on the New Yorker’s annual issue of that name.

Also on the album is the song cycle based on poems by Matthew Zapruder entitled Come On All You Ghosts, selections of which will be heard at Bing. Of a recent performance at Zankel Hall the New York Times wrote, “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.”

In addition, the wide-ranging musical evening features pieces from Brooklyn Rider’s own eclectic repertoire, including the Brooklyn Rider Almanac and Schubert’s great Rosamunde Quartet.

“Both composers [Schubert and Kahane] use the medium of songwriting to expand their works to a grander scale,” Brooklyn Rider’s violist Nicholas Cords, explains. “Small-scale dramas by design, these Almanac works channel a ‘music amongst friends’ vibe that was also a defining ethos of the Schubertiade, Schubert’s primary performance outlet.”

Brooklyn Rider commissioned 15 new works for their multidisciplinary Almanac. Each was influenced by a respective artistic muse from composers who range from Wilco’s Glenn Kotche to jazz icon Bill Frisell. And like the quartet’s name, the project was inspired in equal parts by the cross-disciplinary vision of Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”), the pre-World War I Munich-based artistic collective, and the artistic energy found in the group’s Brooklyn home.

Their Stanford Live concert launches a national tour with Kahane as well as their own seven-city tour of Sweden, Denmark and Germany. For tickets and more information, visit live.stanford.edu.


—By Robert Cable, Communications Manager for Stanford Live