Council: Pekka Kuusisto & Gabriel Kahane
Co-presented by The Schubert Club and Liquid Music
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
6:30 pm Doors // 7:30 pm Music
All Ages
$33 Advance General Admission
$25 Schubert Club Subscribers
Ticket sales are final and non-refundable
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After nearly a decade of musical friendship, it seems only fitting that the iconic Finnish musician Pekka Kuusisto and cult American singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane have formalized their collaboration under the moniker ‘Council.’ Now, they present an evening of intimate and sonically varied songs & and chamber music written during several writing retreats in Northern Karelia and Portland, Oregon.
With this new body of work, Kuusisto & Kahane attempt to locate the universal in the personal, and vice versa: here are stories of individual and collective grief; of nostalgia, adolescence, and memory-play; of the joy, wonder, and perplexity of fatherhood in an era of global instability. As they explore and deepen their own friendship on stage, these two relentlessly searching artists offer a musical tapestry depicting the complexities of life in the 21st century.
The program is rounded out with music by, among others, J.S. Bach and Nico Muhly.
Pekka Kuusisto - violin, voice, harmonium, four-string electric guitar, loops, electronics
Gabriel Kahane - piano, voice, electric & acoustic guitars, harmonium, loops
Gabriel Kahane is a musician and storyteller whose work increasingly lives at the intersection of art and social practice. As a songwriter, he has released five albums, the most recent of which, Magnificent Bird, chronicles the final month of a year-long hiatus from the internet. In 2018, Nonesuch Records released Book of Travelers, a musical account of Kahane’s 8,980-mile railway journey in the aftermath of the 2016 election, an album hailed by Rolling Stone as “a stunning portrait of a singular moment in America.”
In the 23/24 season, Gabriel makes his conducting debut with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, in performances of his piano concerto, Heirloom, written for his father, the noted pianist and conductor Jeffrey Kahane. That work will also receive its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall later in the season. In January of 2024, the BBC Concert Orchestra will give the UK premiere of emergency shelter intake form, Gabriel’s oratorio addressing economic inequality through the lens of homelessness. Other premieres this season include works for Attacca Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, and the Oregon Symphony, for whom he has just begun a second term as Creative Chair.
As a theater artist, Kahane’s work has been heard on Broadway (The Waverly Gallery, starring Elaine May); off-Broadway at the Public Theater (February House); and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which presented his album & stage spectacle, The Ambassador, at the Next Wave Festival in 2014, under the direction of Tony-winner John Tiffany.
Gabriel’s creative collaborators range from Phoebe Bridgers, Paul Simon, Sufjan Stevens, Sylvan Esso, and Chris Thile, to Caroline Shaw, Anthony McGill, and the Danish String 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.