Encountering for the first time Gabriel Kahane, a contemplative American songwriter and storyteller who is currently performing his Magnificent Bird/Book of Travelers set of solo shows in the 128-seat Peter J. Sharp Theater on the top floor at Playwrights Horizons, makes me feel as if I have made a new friend.
A former New Yorker living for the last few years with his wife and daughter in Portland, Oregon, Kahane offers a pair of thoughtful song cycles, each running approximately 70 minutes, that reflect his life and times over the last decade as a modestly neurotic Jewish-American man in his later 30s.
For Boomers like me who may not be familiar with Kahane (in spite of a writing and performing career that has extended more than a dozen years), let’s note that his sweetly husky tenor vocals tend to recall James Taylor, Cat Stevens, or Paul Simon in quality, and his lyrical, large-hearted songs regarding the American landscape and its array of people are not unlike some of their compositions.
Drawn from two earlier song collections, Magnificent Bird and Book of Travelers have been realized for the stage by director Annie Tippe and her designers as cozy visits with Kahane at his home studio in Portland. A grand piano dwells at the heart of a warmly lit, inviting, lived-in room pleasantly furnished with old-school easy chairs, vintage rugs, stacked books, musical instruments, and professorial clutter. (The furniture and a row of shaded windows at the rear of the room are shifted slightly to provide a different visual angle for each of the two shows.)
Dressed in a well-worn cardigan and jeans, Kahane in person is a shaggy, nice looking fellow in his early 40s with a salt and pepper beard and low-keyed, affable ways. Although Kahane uses a hand mike when away from the keyboard—which he plays so adroitly—his easy manner and conversational storytelling makes his stage performance appear spontaneous and altogether agreeable.
Magnificent Bird examines Kahane’s desire to break his obsession with technology, the internet, and “kvetching about Twitter on Twitter,” so in late 2019 he relinquished his cell phone, closed his social media accounts, and began enjoying an off-line way of living. Then the pandemic crisis in 2020 witnessed Kahane and his family unexpectedly resettling in the Pacific Northwest while maintaining ties to his grandmother in Manhattan. Its companion piece, Book of Travelers, reveals more autobiographical bits but mostly flashes back to a solo railroad journey that Kahane took around America in 2016 that covered nearly 9,000 miles in two weeks.
Kahane’s insights on our anxious times, his adjustment (or not) to new ways of existence and his quirky, mostly upbeat experiences with people met along those cross-country travels led to the creation of many songs comprising the two pieces. Folksy American art songs, they are variously plaintive, droll, wistful, tender, and heartfelt compositions often wonderfully descriptive of characters, places, and emotions.
These observant songs and stories so personably delivered by Kahane mostly at the piano are nicely paced by Annie Tippe’s staging and visually enhanced by her designers, namely AMP Scenography in collaboration with Oscar Escobedo for the apt, handsome setting and Wendy Yang for casually dressing the artist as a dad. Designer Christopher Bowser’s calorific, subtly modulating lighting beautifully fosters an intimate atmosphere.
Of course, gently introspective songs and stories eschewing razzle-dazzle are not to everyone’s taste in musicals, but fans of Kahane’s songs are bound to love these little shows that he terms his “very public therapy sessions.” Only now dimly recalling that Kahane provided the score for February House, an intriguing musical staged by the Public Theater back in 2012, I am delighted to make his acquaintance again under such friendly circumstances. I hope that some of you will get to meet him, too.
