PROGRAM: GABRIEL KAHANE AND BROOKLYN RIDER JANUARY 29 / 7:30 PM BING CONCERT HALL

ARTISTS PROGRAM Gabriel Kahane, piano and vocals Selections from The Brooklyn Rider Almanac Brooklyn Rider Gabriel Kahane: Bradbury Studies Johnny Gandelsman, violin Songs from The Ambassador Colin Jacobsen, violin Selections from Come On All You Ghosts Nicholas Cords, viola Eric Jacobsen, cello Franz Schubert: String Quartet No. 13 in A Minor, D. 804 (Rosamunde) (1824) Allegro ma non troppo Andante Minuetto: Allegretto – Trio Funding for this program is provided by the Allegro moderato Western States Arts Federation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional selections will be announced from the stage. The program will include one intermission. Brooklyn Rider records for Mercury Classics.

Exclusive Management for Brooklyn Rider: Opus 3 Artists 470 Park Avenue South, 9th Floor North New York, New York 10016 www.opus3artists.com

PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Please be considerate of others and turn off all phones, pagers, and watch alarms, and unwrap all lozenges prior to the performance. Photography and recording of any kind are not permitted. Thank you.

28 STANFORD LIVE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 THE BROOKLYN RIDER ALMANAC Additionally, this project afforded us the tion for the original song. In the string quartet Over a century ago, the cross-disciplinary opportunity to seek fresh perspectives on adaptation, shards of motivic material from relationship between the German composer string quartet writing. On the surface, these the song are scattered widely and wildly as the Arnold Schoenberg and the Russian-born composers come mostly from the other side tune struggles to announce itself amidst the artist Wassily Kandinsky greatly affected of the classical fence: the worlds of jazz, rock, chaos. While the sound world is quite varied, both of their creative psyches. The string and folk. But more significantly, they represent drawing on extended string techniques and quartet played a supporting role in their first some of our favorite musical thinkers, and we other contemporary vocabulary, the spirit of encounter, and we look to their symbiotic were deeply confident they would have much the work comes straight from Schubert and friendship as a springboard for The Brooklyn to offer our medium. Our newly assembled Mahler: that is to say, it attempts to con- Rider Almanac, a commissioning project and cadre is inclusive of old friends and certain tinue the tradition, evoked so frequently by the title of our latest album. “musical crushes”—those we have long wished those two composers, of a fluid exchange of to approach but lacked proper courage or ideas between instrumental and vocal works. Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, the circumstance. Recalling the eclecticism of Der Likewise, Bradbury Studies derives its materials composer’s first full dip into the opaque Blaue Reiter Almanach, we have embraced from an extant song. In the piece, after several waters of atonality, was a musical lightning the varied results and feel that our boundaries false starts and abandoned pathways, the rod that sharply divided audiences and have been expanded in the process. plaintive melody and original song finally burst critics alike. Following the riotous premiere through the texture in their original form, al- in Vienna in 1908, the work received its We are reminded at every turn of this project beit with the first violin taking the place of the Munich debut some three years later. In that music is a deeply immersive art form, voice, before a coda of new material intrudes the audience for that performance sat something that cannot be understood to bring the work to its conclusion. Kandinsky. Transformed by Schoenberg’s divorced from its broader cultural context. —Gabriel Kahane music, Kandinsky took a further step towards By magnifying the creative force of inspiration, abstraction in his style with his landmark we hope that you will endeavor (as we do) to painting Impression III, a visual synthesis hear the music as only the tip of an iceberg. FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) of that very concert. A friendship ensued —Brooklyn Rider STRING QUARTET IN A MINOR, D. 804 between these visionaries, and Schoenberg (ROSAMUNDE) (1824) soon became associated with a group of artists surrounding Kandinsky known as Der GABRIEL KAHANE (B. 1981) Given Franz Schubert’s undeniable stature Blaue Reiter (our very namesake). In 1912, this BRADBURY STUDIES in the pantheon of musical luminaries, it is a group published Der Blaue Reiter Almanach, challenging exercise more than 200 years later a highly eclectic collection of artwork, Across the musical ages, it has just as often to imagine him as greatly underappreciated essays, and music which served as an artistic been the case that composers look outside of within his own lifetime. Much of his work testament to their era while also offering a the sphere of music for creative inspiration. was unpublished upon his death, much of vision for the future. Gabriel Kahane’s most recent album, The it spread out in the hands of his small social Ambassador, looks at Los Angeles as the circle in Vienna. He was known in his day as The unquenchable drive for artistic muse for his project. Referencing 10 specific a composer of mere Hausmusik—part songs, exploration and the open embrace of the building addresses with a range of characters lieder, and various pieces for piano. Almost collective spirit displayed by Der Blaue Reiter and scenarios spanning from the 1940s to the none of his large-scale works was known by the are similarly hallmarks of today’s artistic present, the album is a loving ode to the City Viennese public, much less outside of Vienna. zeitgeist, and The Brooklyn Rider Almanac of Angels. Schubert himself was not a virtuoso performer; attempts to honor the present. Using music —Nicholas Cords he wrote no concerti, so his cause was not as our project’s touchstone, we asked a select advanced by the popular virtuosos of the era. group of composers to create short works for Bradbury Studies is a loving deconstruction of Italy was all the rage. The incomparable and us inspired by a creative muse from relatively the song “Bradbury (304 Broadway)” from my devilish violinist Paganini was enormously recent memory. Not only did the composers 2014 album, The Ambassador. The “Brad- popular, as was the music of Rossini. readily accept the challenge, but the varied bury” of both titles refers to the iconic and sui sources of inspiration—from David Byrne generis fin-de-siècle building in downtown And so it was left mostly to Schubert and his to Keith Haring to William Faulkner—were LA, which is prominently featured in the 1982 intimate circle of friends to organize evenings consistently a surprise and a delight to us. cult classic Blade Runner, a film whose plot, of informal performances composed mostly setting, and characters provided great inspira- of lieder and part songs with the ink still

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drying, referred to as Schubertiaden. It took and with pianist/composer Timo Andres, later figures such as Robert Schumann, who the latter tour culminating in a duo recital was an extremely prescient observer of the at Carnegie Hall as part of that institution’s musical landscape, to elevate Schubert’s status 125th anniversary season. In March, Kahane for a wider audience. Schumann’s description makes his European solo debut in a concert from an 1840 essay on Schubert’s Ninth at the recently opened Paris Philharmonie. Symphony for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik could just as easily apply to tonight’s selection, Gabriel Kahane has been commissioned the Rosamunde Quartet: “And this heavenly by, among others, the Brooklyn Academy length, like a fat novel in four volumes by Gabriel Kahane of Music, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Jean Paul—never-ending, and if only that Philharmonic, the Kronos Quartet, and the reader may go on creating in the same Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, with vein afterwards. How refreshing is their sense whom, as Orpheus’ first composer-in- composer’s incidental music to the Helmina of inexhaustible wealth where with others residence, he toured in the spring of 2013, von Chézy play Rosamunde. While this music one always fears the ending, troubled by the performing Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 conveys a serene pastoral, it is perhaps also presentiment of ultimate disappointment.” States, an hour-long cycle on texts from a reference to yet another disappointment. the WPA American Guide Series. By all accounts, the production was a Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet (1824) colossal failure! The sense of the ultimate marks an important transition in Schubert’s Kahane’s recent studio credits, aside from disappointment which grips the Rosamunde music for string quartet from Hausmusik- his work as a leader, include a track on last Quartet is finally broken by the work’s rousing infused works (composed mainly with his year’s Beck Song Reader, appearances on Hungarian-inspired finale, bringing this novel- family quartet in mind) to works of grand, Blake Mills’ Heigh Ho alongside Fiona Apple length song without words to a conclusion. dramatic scope (the famed Death and the and Jon Brion, and several projects with —Nicholas Cords Maiden Quartet appeared in the same year). Sufjan Stevens, as well as performances Reluctantly buoyed by the musicianship and recordings with Chris Thile of Punch GABRIEL KAHANE of the Ignaz Schuppanzigh Quartet and Brothers, for whom he opened on tour Hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of the a desire to increase his public scope, throughout the United States in 2015. year’s very best albums,” Gabriel Kahane’s Schubert composed this quartet after an major-label debut, The Ambassador, is extended struggle with venereal disease. An avid theater artist, Kahane wrote the a meditation on the underbelly of Los His dark state of mind could be summed musical February House, with book by Angeles seen through the lens of 10 street up in this excerpt from a letter to a friend: playwright Seth Bockley, which received its addresses. Last season, Kahane appeared “I feel myself to be the most unfortunate, world premiere in productions at the Long at BAM’s Harvey Theater in the critically the most miserable being in the world.” Wharf Theater in New Haven and New acclaimed New York premiere of the stage York’s Public Theater in 2012; an original production of The Ambassador, directed In this quartet, Schubert often draws from cast album was released on StorySound by Tony Award–winner John Tiffany. The the world of his own songs to help convey Records. Upcoming theater projects include production was also presented by the Center a complex field of emotions. The figuration commissions from the Public Theater in New for the Art of Performance at UCLA, as in the second violin at the beginning of the York and Signature Theater in Arlington, well as by Carolina Performing Arts at UNC first movement is reminiscent of Schubert’s Virginia, as well as a collaboration with Pulitzer Chapel Hill, where Kahane is involved in a song Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at Prize–winning playwright Annie Baker. multiyear academic and artistic residency. the Spinning Wheel), calling to mind a similar sentiment expressed in the song: “My peace A graduate of Brown University and a two- The 2015–2016 season finds the pianist, is gone, my heart is heavy, I’ll find it never, time MacDowell Colony Fellow, Gabriel singer-songwriter, and composer involved never again,” while the third movement draws Kahane lives in Brooklyn, New York. in a number of touring projects with friends from Schubert’s Die Götter Griechenlands and collaborators old and new. In addition (The Greek Gods), in which Friedrich BROOKLYN RIDER to making solo appearances with the North Schiller’s text asks: “Fair world, where art thou, Hailed as “the future of chamber music” Carolina and Colorado Symphonies, as come again glorious age of nature.” The (Strings), the game-changing string quartet well as with Boston-based string orchestra work gains its unofficial nickname from the Brooklyn Rider presents eclectic repertoire A Far Cry, Kahane will appear on separate Andante movement’s theme, taken from the and gripping performances that continue tours with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider

30 STANFORD LIVE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 to draw rave reviews from classical, world, Brooklyn Rider often appears under the and rock critics alike. NPR credits Brooklyn umbrella of outside initiatives started by Rider with “recreating the 300-year-old its members. In 2003, violinist Johnny form of string quartet as a vital and creative Gandelsman created In A Circle, a series 21st-century ensemble”; the Los Angeles of New York performance events exploring Times dubs the group “one of the wonders connections between music and the visual arts. of contemporary music”; and Vice likens its He launched In A Circle Records in 2008 with members to “motocross daredevils who never the release of Brooklyn Rider’s eclectic debut screw up a stunt.” Equally at home in clubs recording, Passport, followed by Dominant and concert halls, the quartet has played Brooklyn Rider Curve in 2010 and Seven Steps in 2012; the first venues as varied as Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, two albums made NPR’s year-end roundups, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, Le Poisson while the third was named an NPR Listener Rouge, Japan’s Todai-ji, Lincoln Center, Favorite. In 2013, In A Circle released violist Brooklyn’s Littlefield, the Library of Congress, “... the future of classical Nicholas Cords’ solo recording Recursions. the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and South by music”—Strings Colin and Eric Jacobsen are cofounders of Southwest. Through visionary programming the acclaimed New York–based orchestral and global collaborations, it has a “down- collective the Knights, and all four quartet Last year, alongside its ambitious and well- to-earth demeanor…[that] demystifies members have taken part in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk received The Brooklyn Rider Almanac, the contemporary classical music and that invites Road Ensemble, performing worldwide and quartet had a residency at the University everyone into the tent” (Time Out New York). recording three albums for Sony Classical. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, crowned A long-standing relationship between by the world premiere of Veils and Vespers Last season the group celebrated its 10th Brooklyn Rider and another Silk Road Project by Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther anniversary with the groundbreaking member, Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Adams. It also performed the New York multidisciplinary project The Brooklyn Kalhor, resulted in the critically acclaimed premiere of Chalk and Soot, a collaboration Rider Almanac, for which it recorded and 2008 recording Silent City. Other recent between quartet violinist Colin Jacobsen toured 15 specially commissioned works, recording projects include 2013’s A Walking and choreographer John Heginbotham, each inspired by a different artistic muse. Fire on Mercury Classics and The Impostor at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival In the 2015–16 season, the players continue with Béla Fleck on Deutsche Grammophon/ and toured with banjo legend Béla Fleck. to perform these works in concert and Mercury Classics, plus 2011’s much-praised The players also celebrated the 10th- will pair them with standard classics of Brooklyn Rider Plays Philip Glass on the anniversary season of the Stillwater Music the repertoire, including Schubert’s String composer’s Orange Mountain Music label. Festival, a weeklong Minnesota chamber Quartet No. 13 in A Minor, Rosamunde. festival they founded in 2006 as a place to A public radio favorite, Brooklyn Rider has unveil new repertoire and collaborations. The group will also continue to explore been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, collaborations, including with singer- On Point, All Songs Considered, Deceptive Other recent highlights include the songwriter Gabriel Kahane, whose new Cadence, and All Things Considered; WNYC’s group’s Wigmore Hall debut in 2014, album will be released in February. The Soundcheck; and American Public Media’s showcasing repertoire from the album A recording features Kahane’s The Fiction Performance Today; as well as on NY1 Walking Fire, which it also toured across Issue, a work first performed in 2012 television in New York City. The ensemble’s the United States and northern Europe. that was commissioned for Brooklyn recordings are played across North America The players collaborated with soprano Rider by Carnegie Hall. The players will on stations ranging in focus from classical Dawn Upshaw and performed at the Ojai tour with Kahane in February 2016, in to world, jazz, pop, and new music. Music Festival, the U.S. Open tennis • addition to undertaking their own seven- tournament, the Cologne Philharmonie, city tour of Sweden, Denmark, and Rome’s American Academy, Sweden’s Germany the following month. Closer Malmö Festival, the Lincoln Center to home, the group will be ensemble- Festival, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, in-residence at National Sawdust, a new and Texas’ South by Southwest, where performance space in Williamsburg, the quartet was the only classical group Brooklyn, with the residency entailing with an official invitation to play. four performances across the season.

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