American composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane claims someone once described one of his songs as having been from the wastepaper basket of Schubert — but, Kahane hastened to add, “I think he meant that as a compliment.”
Certainly Kahane is a successful songwriter, and if not quite as prolific as the 19th century Viennese composer, is quite productive on a number of 21st-century platforms and takes his inspiration from quintessential 21st-century experiences. On today’s date in 2018, for example, the Oregon Symphony premiered his Emergency Shelter Intake Form, a song-cycle or oratorio inspired by the questionnaire homeless people have to take to secure a shelter bed.
“I live in Brooklyn, and I had volunteered at a shelter in Manhattan,” Kahane said. “I started thinking about the banality of going through that crushing bureaucracy on top of experiencing extreme poverty. That led to the intake form as a jumping-off point for the libretto. It is somewhere between found text and my own extrapolations that began with this sterile administrative form.”
The Oregon Symphony’s premiere performance of Gabriel Kahane’s Emergency Shelter Intake Form was recorded, and, in equally quintessential 21st-century fashion, is available as a download.
Gabriel Kahane (b. 1981): ‘What brings you here?’ from Emergency Shelter Intake Form; Alicia Hall Moran, mezzo-soprano; Oregon Symphony; Carlos Kalmar, conductor; Digital download