GABRIEL KAHANE'S LOS ANGELES SONG CYCLE

Gabriel Kahane is not an easy one to pin down. The composer and performer has written concert works, song cycles, folk albums, and even a musical, a varied body of work that is held together by a consistent sense of nuance and wit. For his latest project, The Ambassador, a set of songs tied to Los Angeles buildings both iconic and forgotten, the lines blur even further, between fact and fiction, past and present, myth and memory.

Kahane brings his new songs, which also appear on a concept album of the same name that marked his major-label début earlier this year, to the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week in one of the centerpiece’s of this year’s Next Wave Festival in advance of a prodigal-son return to UCLA’s Freud Playhouse next February. Conceived in collaboration with the theater director John Tiffany (who directed The Glass Menagerie on Broadway last year and won a Tony for his work on Once), The Ambassador is more layered with history than a standard concert, yet aims to make all the backstory accessible. Kahane says he first found his way to project as he began spending more time in Los Angeles in recent years. “Despite having been born in LA, I was raised on the East Coast and in Northern California so I grew up with this anti-LA dogma,” he laughs. “It wasn’t until my mid-twenties when I started spending more time there that I felt myself getting in touch with the underbelly and the essence of LA.”

He was especially drawn to the architecture, he explains, as a way into the varied ideations of the city. “I spouted off about this binary formulation of the idea that there were two LAs: the æsthetic LA, the mythological LA of film and TV and fiction on the one hand, and then the vulnerable, physical city that’s prone to earthquakes and that burns.” he says. “Architecture sits at the intersection of those two, the idea being that architecture is both an æsthetic project, and also that buildings burn down and fall down.”

The songs themselves, thirteen of which form the spine of his performance, carry the weight of research, but the end result has a gentle levity. “Slumlord Crocodile,” for example, ties up Rush Limbaugh, FEMA, and the politics of wealth disparity in disaster recovery in a propulsive love story of sorts that pulses and pushes without shoving. “I was like, ‘Wow, I really want to write a song about that,’ but that is so obviously not a song,” Kahane jokes. “So instead I started doing research about these fires and came across some really interesting stories about arson and these really disturbed arsonists whose romantic attachments were tied up in setting fires. I ended up inventing this character of this creepy arsonist who sets fires to try to win over the love of his object of desire.”

Kahane says the structure of the evening, which alternates songs with introductory texts, forms a sort of “reverse cabaret,” in reference to Christine Jones’ striking set of towering stacks of books, tapes, and records, a monument to “cultural detritus” that helps give physical shape to a project that pulls together Bladerunner, the Rodney King riots, Raymond Chandler, Robert Kennedy’s assassination, Richard Neutra, and Mike Davis’ sociological studies of Southern California. “Normally in a cabaret, you have cover songs that are stitched together with personal anecdotes, but in this instance, the music is all original and just about everything that’s interstitial is a found text,” Kahane explains. “There are various ways that we explore those found texts, but what feels really natural is that almost all of these songs are written from a place of research, whether it’s about reading letters of architects or watching films or studying the writings of Mike Davis. What I think is really exciting about the piece and the way that John has helped to create this kind of clarity for the audience without holding their hands too much is that, in a way, it puts my creative process on display. We get the texts that inspired the songs, and then the songs are there.”

The Ambassador runs through Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, New York, and February 27-28, 2015, at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA. Photography by Ben Cohen.

Jonathan Shia is the editor of The Last Magazine.

Esteban Gomez Finds Creatives a Home

With years of experience in the fashion industry, the Creatives Agent at Compass offers designers, photographers, stylists, models, and others a new approach to find a place to call home.

The Last Magazine Celebrates the Fall 2019 Issue

The cover story of our Fall 2019 issue is a love letter to New York City by photographer Dan Martensen and stylist Clare Richardson starring one of our favorite models of the moment, Binx Walton. For our launch party, we packed into Lola, one of the East Village’s newest hotspots, for an all-night dance party […]

Peter Ash Lee's New Magazine 'Burdock' Celebrates Asian-American Talent

Named after a root vegetable common to Asian cuisine, photographer Peter Ash Lee’s new magazine and digital platform celebrates Asian-American culture in an attempt to welcome a more diverse group both in front of and behind the camera.

Hans Neumann's Berlin Skaters

In an exclusive photo essay and “video poem,” the Peruvian photographer and director explores his family’s ancestral home through the lens of a group of young skateboarders who reflect the vitality of a new generation of European youth.

FUMI NAGASAKA STARTS A 'TEENAGE RIOT'

In her second book, the Japanese photographer captures the individual personalities and æsthetics of four adolescent girls in their hometowns in a collection that is both intimate and anthropological.

RO KWON ON CULTS AND YOUNG LOVE IN 'THE INCENDIARIES'

In her propulsive début novel, ten years in the making, the author ponders the unfathomability of others in the tale of a young woman who joins a cult.

MARTIN ZÄHRINGER GOES FISHING WITH JOHN BAKER

In his first book, the London-based photographer documents every facet of the life of a Barbadian fisherman with whom he felt an immediate kinship, acting as both visitor and companion.

JONAH BOKAER'S FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY

The collaborative, media-mixing contemporary choreographer celebrates fifteen years of his own company with a retrospective program and world premiere to look back while moving forward.

MARIO SORRENTI SHOWS A NEW SIDE OF KATE MOSS

In a new book of previously unreleased photographs, the famed photographer spotlights the iconic model’s innocence from their days of youthful love.

ROMAN MEJIA SHINES IN A NEW GENERATION OF DANCERS AT NEW YORK CITY BALLET

As the company makes its way through tumultuous times, the eighteen-year-old demonstrates the promise of a rising young crop of dancers with his clean lines and bounding jumps.

NEW YORK BY THE LAST MAGAZINE: VICE IMPACT PUBLISHER KATHERINE KEATING CHANNELS YOUTH ACTIVISM TO CREATE CHANGE

In an era of flourishing youth activism, the politically-minded advocate is harnessing the tools of social media and the internet to effect positive change by a young generation through direct calls to action.

NEW YORK BY THE LAST MAGAZINE: AUTHOR ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN SAYS WRITING IS LIKE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME

In her novel and short stories, the Staten Island-based author probes the border between science and literature with discomfiting tales about the body and its relationship to the perilous world around it.

HERMIONE HOBY'S 'NEON IN DAYLIGHT' REINVENTS THE NEW YORK NOVEL FOR A NEW AGE

In her début novel, the young British author ponders questions of selfhood and power dynamics in a thoughtful bildungsroman set during a sweltering New York summer.

ADWOA ABOAH HOSTS OUR TENTH-ANNIVERSARY PARTY WITH BURBERRY

Take a look at our tenth-anniversary celebration with Burberry at Radegast Hall in Brooklyn, hosted by our latest cover model Adwoa Aboah.

KANAZAWA

Photographer Marie Zucker was given rare access into an okiya, or boarding house, in the Japanese city of Kanazawa, where she captured these reflective images of geisha-in-training.

THE LAST WORD: ICEBERG

The Arctic ice pack puts the freeze on a teetering relationship in the latest edition of The Last Word, our ongoing series of original short fiction.

THE LAST GIFT GUIDE 2017

Our annual selection of gifts for you and yours, including everything you can imagine from a silk toothbrush on up to your own private island.

DAVID HALLBERG ON INJURIES AND INSECURITIES

In his new memoir, the celebrated principal dancer of American Ballet Theatre recounts his intense childhood training, joining the Bolshoi Ballet, and the arduous yearlong rehabilitation after a nearly career-ending injury that gave him a new perspective on his talent and the art form.