Gabriel Kahane The Ambassador LOS ANGELES PREMIERE Fri, Feb 27 Directed by John Tiffany & Sat, Feb 28 Freud Playhouse Gabriel Kahane Vocals, Piano, Guitar, Wurlitzer 8pm Alex Sopp Keyboards, Vocals, Flutes Rob Moose Electric Guitars RUNNING TIME: Casey Foubert Electric Bass and Programming Approximately 75 minutes; Ted Poor Drums No intermission Laura Lutzke Violin Nathan Schram Viola PRE- AND POST-SHOW EVENTS: Andrea Lee Cello Pre-show interactive exhibit and film screenings Fri and Sat in Freud Courtyard. Christine Jones Set Designer Jane Cox Lighting Designer Sat Feb 28 post-show discussion moderated by Joshua Higgason Video Designer David Kipen of Libros Schmibros. Bart Fasbender Sound Effects Designer CAP UCLA SPONSORS: Supported in part by the Kevin Jeske Young Artist Fund, Henry Mancini Tribute Fund and Anchor Watch LLC Production Management National Endowment for the Arts. Additional Mary-Susan Gregson Production Stage Manager support provided by an Anonymous donor. Brett Banakis Associate Set Designer Annie Tippe Assistant Director Mary Ellen Stebbins Associate Lighting Designer Brenndan McGuire Sound Engineer MEDIA SPONSOR: Commissioned by: BAM Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA Laguna Beach Music Festival Development funded through the generous support of: Linda and Stuart Nelson Additional support provided by: Jerry Kohl Ted and Mary Jo Shen Edward Helms Bronya and Andy Galef Music from The Ambassador: Sony Masterworks *Albums on Sale in the Freud Courtyard MESSAGE FROM THE CENTER: Films Life in Los Angeles can be confounding and confronting as often Echo Park Film Center as it is inspiring and culturally enthralling. We regularly exist The Sound We See: A Los Angeles City Symphony here together in a sort of shared state of communal isolation. Filmmakers: Maya Abee, Juliette Allen, Bridgette Asturias, We, more often than not, spend a great deal of time alone in our Andrew Becerra, Nicola Celada, Albert Celis, Brian Chavez, cars, carving our own personal ant trails through this city of Kathy Choi, Danielle Dickerson, Hayley Elliot, Elena Gabbro, cities, sometimes as intrepid adventurers from east to west or Cuauhtemoc Hernandez, Diana Hernandez, Marilyn Hernandez, north to south, sometimes as hibernators in our own particular Paola Hernandez, Anais Hinojosa, Ish Lipman, Danny neighborhood pockets of existence. Lougnaxay, Felix Martinez, James Noel, Alyssa Osorio, Emille Palamides, Ellie Parker, Chloe Reyes, Sam Ribakoff, Isabella That drive-time isolation is perhaps why we are so prone to Mae Robbins, Ashley Ruiz, Naima Sabur, Angelo Sanchez, John talk to one another about the routes we take and the time spent Stockburger, Aura Oropeza Tellez, Penelope Uribe Abee, Charles marking the distance between two places. Perhaps it pulls us Valencia, Walter Vargas, Victoria Velasco, Bobby Villagomez, out of the isolation and back into that state of shared existence, Kathryn Wilkins memory and exploration. OUT THE WINDOW, a program of Freewaves There’s something about this city that evokes feelings. Or as Clean Square: by Jason Jenn and Roland Rodriguez Gabriel Kahane said was part of the impetus for this work: “I #Lanature: by Julian Brummitt and Keelin S. Clark wanted to know why the city made me feel so much.” Take Fountain: by Stephen van Dyck Grapevine Land Scan: by Center for Land Use Interpretation As we’ve collaborated with Gabriel and worked toward this Juan Fish Testimonial: by Arturo Rono-Santillano weekend’s performances of The Ambassador, we’ve also invoked Cine(ma): by Paolo Davanzo a keen sense of curiosity about our city and why it makes us feel www.out-the-window.org so much, how it is reflected in the eyes of art and literature, the www.freewaves.org architecture around us and the perceptions of the people whose lives form the millions of intersecting trail lines on a map of L.A. Peter Rand Artifact Los Angeles: Five Easy Steps Looking through the lens of film and music and books, we www.peterrandart.com invite you to share experiences and thoughts about Los Angeles through our interactive exhibits on site tonight. After the curtain Special thanks to Joel Hurwit for the Los Angeles album art and falls on Saturday night, we’ll dive deeper into the concept of to UCLA professor Brenda Stevenson, author of The Contested Los Angeles as literary muse as Gabriel is joined by L.A. Times Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne and author Richard of the LA Riots who earlier this week participated in a special Rayner, in a discussion titled Ten Million Aphorists in Search of discussion with Gabriel Kahane about the importance of a City moderated by David Kipen of iconic eastside bookstore documentary storytelling and the way it metabolizes in different Libros Schmibros. mediums. Thank you to everyone who has shared music memories of L.A. And thank you, for being here with us tonight. through our #LAMusicMap project. Please continue to share on social media, let’s keep the conversation going. Many Los Angeles artists have participated in our Los-Angeles centric Art in Action activities presented in conjunction with The Ambassador. Thanks to everyone who lent their creativity to this project! ABOUT THE ARTISTS Carnegie Hall, at the Library of Congress with fellow composer/ performer Timo Andres, and on tour throughout North America GABRIEL KAHANE with cellist Alisa Weilerstein. Hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of the year’s very best albums”, Gabriel Kahane’s major label debut, The Ambassador (Sony Music Kahane’s musical February House received world premiere Masterworks) is a meditation on the underbelly of Los Angeles seen productions at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven and New through the lens of ten street addresses. Bruce Willis’ hair, detective York’s Public Theater in 2012; an original cast album was released fiction, modernist architecture, and race riots all provide fodder for on StorySound Records. Upcoming theater projects include this collection of songs that is as sonically varied as it is thematically commissions from the Public Theater in New York and Signature focused. Gabriel was born in Venice Beach but spent his childhood Theater in Arlington, VA, as well as a collaboration with Pulitzer on the East Coast and in Northern California. With the release of Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker. The Ambassador— produced by Kahane along with Ma! Johnson (St. Vincent), Casey Foubert (Sufjan Stevens), and Rob Moose (Bon He lives in Brooklyn, NY. Iver)— Gabriel turns his gaze toward his birthplace. JOHN TIFFANY In December of 2014, Kahane and his band appeared at the BAM John Tiffany is Associate Director of the Royal Court Theatre. Harvey Theater in the critically-acclaimed NY premiere of the Credits include Hope and The Pass (Royal Court), Let the Right One staged version of The Ambassador directed by Tony-winner John In (Dundee Rep, Royal Court and West End. South Bank Show Tiffany Once,( Black Watch), and designed by Tony-winner Christine Sky Arts Award), The Glass Menagerie (A.R.T. & Broadway), Once Jones (Spring Awakening, American Idiot). The Ambassador will be (Broadway & West End. Tony Award for Best Director. Obie and seen again this season at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse. Outer Critics’ Circle Award), Macbeth (also Broadway), Enquirer (co-directed with Vicky Featherstone), The Missing, Peter Pan, The A tireless collaborator, Kahane’s recent credits include a track House of Bernarda Alba, Transform Caithness: Hunter, Be Near Me, on this year’s Beck Song Reader (Warby Parker), an album that Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us, The Bacchae, Black Watch (Olivier also features Jack White, Jarvis Cocker, Laura Marling, and Beck Award, Best Director. Critics’ Circle award, Best Director. South himself; appearances on Blake Mills’ Heigh Ho; several projects with Bank Show Award), Elizabeth Gordon Quinn, Home: Glasgow (National Theatre of Scorland, founding Associate Director), Sufjan Stevens; as well as performances and recordings Chris Jerusalem (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Las Chicas del Tres y Media Thile of Punch Brothers, for whom Gabriel will be opening on tour Floppies (Granero Theatre, Mexico City; Edinburgh Fringe); If throughout the U.S. this spring. Destroyed True, Mercury Fur, The Straits, Helmet (Paines Plough, Associate Director); Gagarin Way, Abandonment, Among Unbroken Dividing his time between the club and the concert hall, Kahane Hearts, Passing Places (Traverse, Edinburgh). John Tiffany trained has been commissioned by, among others, the Brooklyn Academy at Glasgow University gaining an MA in Theatre and Classics. From of Music, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kronos 2010-11 John was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. Quartet, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, with whom he toured in the spring of 2013 performing Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States, CHRISTINE JONES an hour-long cycle on texts from the WPA American Guide Series. Christine Jones is a Tony Award-winning set designer and the He has appeared in recital with string quartet Brooklyn Rider at Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed Theatre for One, a portable private performing arts space for one actor and one Prague Opera, and Hamlet in London with Benedict Cumberbatch. audience member. For director John Tiffany she designed Let the Opera designs include Lucia di Lammermoor at Sydney Opera Right One In, which recently closed in London. She directed the House and Houston Grand Opera and Don Giovanni at New York sensational immersive nightclub dining experience Queen of the City Opera. Jane designs regularly for the Oregon Shakespeare Night, which New York Magazine has called the “Hottest Nightlife Festival, and has been a member of the Monica Bill Barnes dance Experience in town”. Her set design for American Idiot, A Punk company for fifteen years. She also teaches classes in light in Rock Musical directed by Michael Mayer, won the Tony Award for artistic expression, theater design and collaboration at Princeton best set design in 2009, and in 2012, Jones made her debut at The University, and has a working relationship with the Tisch Design Metropolitan Opera with her design for Rigoletto, set in 1960s Las Department at NYU.