Book of Travelers Gabriel Kahane

• 1 November 03:51
• 2 Baltimore 03:34
• 3 Model Trains 03:38
• 4 Baedeker 03:26
• 5 Friends of Friends of Bill 03:39
• 6 8980 03:12
• 7 Little Love 03:12
• 8 What If I Told You 04:31
• 9 October 1, 1939 02:16
• 10 Port of Hamburg 04:18
• 11 Singing with a Stranger 02:18
• Total Runtime 37:55

Info for Book of Travelers

Nonesuch Records is pleased to announce that it will release Gabriel Kahane's 8980: Book of Travelers later this year. The album's genesis began on the day after the 2016 presidential election, when Kahane embarked—with no cell phone or other internet-connected device—on a looping, 8,980-mile railway journey through the United States. Over the course of two weeks, he broke bread with dozens of strangers whose stories were woven into a song cycle that he subsequently premiered at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) earlier this year. Written and performed by Kahane (vocals and keyboards), and conceived in collaboration with director Daniel Fish and designer Jim Findlay (set and video design) with lighting by Mark Barton, 8980: Book of Travelers is a personal yet expansive meditation on the idiosyncrasies and anachronisms of train travel, which simultaneously grapples with the wrenching reality of a divided country.

Singer-songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane has recorded critically-acclaimed albums including The Ambassador (called "one of the year's best" by Rolling Stone); The Fiction Issue, an album of his chamber music with string quartet Brooklyn Rider; and Where Are the Arms. The staged version of The Ambassador, directed by Tony-winner John Tiffany, was presented by BAM (2014 Next Wave), CAP UCLA, and Carolina Performing Arts. As a composer of concert works, Kahane has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Oregon Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, with whom he toured his WPA-inspired Gabriel's Guide to the 48 States in 2013. He has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and A Far Cry. An avid theater artist, Kahane's musical February House, with playwright Seth Bockley, premiered at the Public Theater in 2012 and was recorded by the StorySound label. A two-time MacDowell Colony fellow, Kahane has performed and/or recorded with artists ranging from Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, Blake Mills, Chris Thile, and Brad Mehldau, to Jeremy Denk, yMusic, and John Adams. He is a graduate of Brown University and resides in Brooklyn.

Gabriel Kahane, piano, vocals

Recorded at Zeitgeist Studios, Los Angeles, CA, in 2017
Produced by Tony Berg and Gabriel Kahane
Engineered and Mixed by Joseph Lorge

Gabriel Kahane
Composer, pianist, and singer Gabriel Kahane makes his Nonesuch Records debut with the release of Book of Travelers on August 24, 2018; vinyl out September 7. The album comprises a musical travelogue Kahane wrote after the journey he embarked upon the day after the 2016 Presidential election: a looping, 8,980-mile railway journey through the United States. He left behind his cell phone and other internet-connected devices, spending the next two weeks with dozens of strangers whose stories are woven into the cycle. The music is drawn from a longer work that has been performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), among other venues, as 8980: Book of Travelers, a production conceived in collaboration with director Daniel Fish and designer Jim Findlay (set and video design) with lighting by Mark Barton. Pre-order Book of Travelers to download the album track "November" now and get a limited-edition signed print.

Kahane wrote in the New York Times of his trip, which he planned before the election, and was going to take regardless of the outcome: "Where much of the digital world finds us sorting ourselves neatly into cultural and ideological silos, the train, in my experience, does precisely the opposite. It also acts, by some numinous, unseen force, as a kind of industrial-strength social lubricant. To be sure, I encountered people whose politics I found abhorrent, dangerous, and destructive, but in just about every instance, there was something about the person's relationship to family, and loyalty to family, that I found deeply moving. That ability to connect across an ideological divide seemed predicated on the fact that we were quite literally breaking bread together. Perhaps it also had something to do with the pace at which we traveled."

Singer-songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane has recorded critically-acclaimed albums including The Ambassador (called "one of the year's best" by Rolling Stone); The Fiction Issue, an album of his chamber music with string quartet Brooklyn Rider; and Where Are the Arms. The staged version of The Ambassador, directed by Tony-winner John Tiffany, was presented by BAM, CAP UCLA, and Carolina Performing Arts.

As a composer of concert works, Kahane has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Oregon Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, with whom he toured his WPA-inspired Gabriel's Guide to the 48 States in 2013. He has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and A Far Cry. An avid theater artist, Kahane's musical February House, with playwright Seth Bockley, premiered at the Public Theater in 2012 and was recorded by the StorySound label. A two-time MacDowell Colony fellow, Kahane has performed and/or recorded with artists ranging from Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, Blake Mills, Chris Thile, and Brad Mehldau, to Jeremy Denk, yMusic, and John Adams. He is a graduate of Brown University and resides in Brooklyn.

Booklet for Book of Travelers