In Friday’s (4/20) Los Angeles Times, Scott Timberg writes about the Gabriel Kahane’s Crane Palimpsest, which will have its world premiere this weekend by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, led by Music Director Jeffrey Kahane, the composer’s father. “You can’t call him a crossover artist,” Jeffrey Kahane says in the article. “He’s not crossing from one thing to another. He’s completely at home in classical music and in rock music.” For Gabriel Kahane, Crane Palimpsest was “inspired by Hart Crane’s 1930 poem ‘The Bridge,’ [about the Brooklyn Bridge] now considered a landmark of modernism. ‘In my songwriting, I’ve always tried to write about place…. And Crane is doing that at such a high level.’ … The music of Kahane the younger—born in Los Angeles, raised in California and the Northeast—manages then to connect coasts and musical styles as well as generations…. Crane Palimpsest, which includes both the poet’s words alongside the composer’s, is scored for 40 instruments. Gabriel, who will sing and plays piano and guitar, calls it his first piece for a full chamber orchestra.” Among Gabriel Kahane’s orchestral compositions are Orinoco Sketches, which the Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned and premiered in May 2011; he is currently composer in residence with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Posted April 20, 2012
