CSO Spotlight Series
With Spotlight Artist Gabriel Kahane
Take a closer look with the CSO Spotlight Series, a new initiative launched by Music Director Kwamé Ryan to provide a deeper, more expansive exploration of a singular artistic voice each season.
This season, the Charlotte Symphony shines a light on composer, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Kahane, whose poignant musical storytelling traverses genres and themes with insight, empathy, and imagination.
This season, the Charlotte Symphony shines a light on composer, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Kahane, whose poignant musical storytelling traverses genres and themes with insight, empathy, and imagination.
Kahane is a genre-defying composer, singer-songwriter, and storyteller whose work bridges the worlds of classical music, pop, and theater. With a gift for weaving narrative and music into emotionally resonant experiences, his songs explore everything from cross-country travel to housing insecurity, with depth, wit, and compassion.
CSO Spotlight Series Concerts
Featuring: Judith
Delve into a character study of a fictional older widow, based on Kahane's original song "Last Dance." This orchestral reimagining captures the quiet poignancy and complexity of a woman reflecting on love, loss, and longing.
Featuring: Pattern of the Rail: Six Orchestral Songs from Book of Travelers
Following a solo train journey across the United States in the wake of the 2016 Presidential election, Kahane composed this cycle of six orchestral songs to capture the voices, landscapes, and quiet revelations found between the coasts.
Featuring: emergency shelter intake form
Commissioned by the Oregon Symphony in 2016, Kahane's oratorio-style work responds to Portland's housing crisis with empathy and urgency. Drawing from the sterile intake process at shelters, it humanizes homelessness and poverty. A community choir of people affected by homelessness and housing insecurity highlights the issue with power, humor, and honesty, inviting us to reflect on the true meaning of home.
Songwriter Gabe Kahane on trains and 'radical empathy'
emergency shelter intake form: Concert Conversation
