Magnificent Bird / Book of Travelers
- Written and Performed by Gabriel Kahane
- Directed by Annie Tippe
Gabriel Kahane is a musician and storyteller. Highlights of this season include duo tours with fellow composer/performer Caroline Shaw in the U.S. and Europe; the premiere of an orchestral oratorio, co-commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and Oregon Symphony, chronicling the aftermath of the 2020 Almeda Wildfire; a solo debut with the Orchestre National de Lyon; and his San Francisco conducting debut with Carla Kihlstedt’s Twenty-six Little Deaths. Heirloom, a piano concerto written for his father, Jeffrey Kahane, will be released this fall by Nonesuch Records. Gabriel has released five albums as a singer-songwriter, and has collaborated with artists including Phoebe Bridgers, Sufjan Stevens, Sylvan Esso, the Danish String Quartet, Anthony McGill, and Pekka Kuusisto, his bandmate in the duo ‘Council.’ Kahane’s writings on music, literature, and politics can be found at gabrielkahane.substack.com. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family.
Annie Tippe is a director and creator of new work, music theater, and film. She directed the world premieres and subsequent productions of Dave Malloy's Octet, Three Houses, and Ghost Quartet. For Octet, she won the Lortel Award for Best Direction and was named an SDC Callaway Award Finalist. Other recent: Julia May Jonas' Your Own Personal Exegesis (Lincoln Center), Molly Beach Murphy and Jeanna Phillip's COWBOY BOB (Alley Theatre), Selina Fillinger's Potus (Berkeley Rep), Britta Johnson's Life After (Goodman Theatre; Jeff Award Nominee), Leslye Headland's Cult of Love (IAMA), Bess Wohl's Continuity (Goodman Theatre), Tony Meneses' The Hombres (Two River), James and Jerome's INK (co-directed with Rachel Chavkin), and The Conversationalists (Bushwick Starr). Her film "HELP ME MARY" won Best Narrative Short at the Lower East Side Film Festival. Former Ars Nova Director-in-Residence, Drama League Directing Fellow, Williamstown Directing Corps. www.annietippe.com
EXTENDED!
Now through October 13th. Extremely limited availability!
In this duo of intimate solo musical plays, composer Gabriel Kahane blends songwriting and storytelling for a singular, poignant theatrical event. Book of Travelers recounts the strangers he met on a 9,000-mile train journey through a divided America, and Magnificent Bird chronicles a year he spent entirely off-line, and the unexpected turbulence of living quietly. Performed on alternating nights, these two concept albums offer a relentless self-inquiry, and a searing portrait of a world in flux.
Magnificent Bird runs approximately 75 minutes. Book of Travelers runs approximately 65 minutes.
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“An exercise in lyric beauty… [Kahane] is one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day… Book of Travelers is a song cycle of unwavering seriousness, delivering snapshots of a broken and desperate nation.”
“Touching! You’ll relish the journey.”
—Marc Miller, Talkin’ Broadway
Gabriel Kahane is “a spiritual successor to people like Sondheim and LaChiusa, with a style all his own. That style is on excellent display at Playwrights.”
“The songs are all intimate, relatable, miniature heartbreakers.”
