Page 128 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

Singer-songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane brings to Tippet Rise a program of music rich with storytelling.
Devanney Haruta: A lot of your music reflects places that you’ve visited or lived, such as New York City or Los Angeles. What about these places is so influential?
Gabriel Kahane: I would say it’s less about places that I’ve lived—I actually haven’t lived in Los Angeles since I was a toddler. In the case of The Ambassador, I have become really fascinated by Los Angeles architecture and the perception of LA as being superficial, when in fact there’s this incredible literary history behind it and a history of architecture, albeit mostly in private rather than public
spaces. I’ve had a fascination with buildings and the physical structures that frame an experience, and place is so essential to how we frame an experience. My pop psychology hypothesis about why I write about place so much is that I had a rootless childhood and moved around a fair bit. I think place felt a little bit more ephemeral and fragile to me than to someone who grows up in one city.
DH: How is music a good medium for telling stories?
GK: Songwriting has two planes simultaneously: there’s the plane of the music, and then there’s the plane of the text. That allows for these emotional vectors to occur where you’re communicating one thing through the music and not necessarily communicating the same thing through the
128 The Music at Tippet Rise
CONVERSATION WITH
GABRIEL KAHANE