Gabriel Kahane with special guest, Julie Albers
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
6:30 pm Doors // 7:30 pm Show
$22 Advance General Admission // $29 A The Door
All Ages
Ticket sales are final and non-refundable
*The Parkway Theater requires Proof of COVID-19 Vaccination or Negative Test Result for entry to all events.*
The Parkway is pleased to announce the Twin Cities return of renowned musician Gabriel Kahane, hailed by The New Yorker as “one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day,” whose forthcoming new album release Magnificent Bird will be released March 25 by Nonesuch Records.
Opening the night is Julie Albers, principal cellist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO).
Gabriel Kahane has often approached his work from the vantage point of an observer. But now, for the first time since 2011’s Where are the Arms, he’s telling his own story.
With Magnificent Bird, his fifth solo LP and second album for Nonesuch, Kahane brings to life a trunk of songs written in self-imposed isolation—a full year off the internet—with the help of a dozen colleagues, including Andrew Bird, Chris Thile, Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw.
Through piano, vocals and guitar, Magnificent Bird explores quiet and domestic concerns of marriage, fatherhood, and loss all against the backdrop of a nation and planet in crisis.
For this performance, a dozen new songs are brought into conversation alongside earlier work, including moments from Kahane's 8,980 mile train trip-inspired Book of Travelers, as well as excerpts from Twitterkreis.
Over the last decade, Kahane has quietly established himself as a songwriter all his own, grafting a deep interest in storytelling to a keen sense of harmony and rhythm. His major label debut, The Ambassador, a study of Los Angeles seen through the lens of ten street addresses, was hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of the year’s very best albums.”
Kahane has collaborated with a diverse array of artists, including Paul Simon, Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, Blake Mills, and Chris Thile, the front man of Punch Brothers, for whom he opened forty concerts in the US in 2015 and 2016. As a composer, he has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, A Far Cry, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Oregon Symphony, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, with whom he toured in the spring of 2013, performing Kahane’s Guide to the 48 States, an hour-long cycle on texts from the WPA American Guide Series. Other orchestral highlights have included solo appearances with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and The Knights, with whom Kahanerecorded his orchestral song cycle, Crane Palimpsest, following a performance at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall.
An avid theater Artist, Kahane has appeared twice at the BAM Next Wave Festival, in 2014 with the critically-lauded staged version of The Ambassador, directed by Tony-winner John Tiffany; and returning in 2017 with 8980: Book of Travelers, directed by Daniel Fish. He is also the composer-lyricist of the musical February House, which premiered in 2012 at the Public Theater.
Gabriel Kahane lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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American cellist Julie Albers is recognized for her superlative artistry, her charismatic and radiant performing style, and her intense musicianship. She was born into a musical family in Longmont, Colorado and began violin studies at the age of two with her mother, switching to cello at four. She moved to Cleveland during her junior year of high school to pursue studies through the Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Richard Aaron.
At the age of 17, Julie Albers made her orchestral debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, and thereafter has performed in recital and with orchestras throughout North America, Europe, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand. In 2001, she won Second Prize in Munich's Internationalen Musikwettbewerbes der ARD, and was also awarded the Wilhelm-Weichsler-Musikpreis der Stadt Osnabruch. While in Germany, she recorded solo and chamber music of Kodaly for the Bavarian Radio, performances that have been heard throughout Europe. In 2003, Albers was named the first Gold Medal Laureate of South Korea's Gyeongnam International Music Competition.
In 2015, Albers was named principal cellist of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, a post she currently holds in addition to being a Distinguished Artist at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings, a part of Mercer University in Macon, GA. She is passionate about chamber music and regularly appears at such festivals as The Seattle Chamber Music Society, ChamberFest Cleveland, Toronto Summer Music in addition to having been a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two.
Piano generously provided by Yamaha Music