News

Concert Cancellation

Friday (3/13) and Saturday’s (3/14) Concerts Canceled Due to Coronavirus (COVID-19) Concerns

The Louisville Orchestra has been closely monitoring the reports and recommendations about the COVID-19 (coronavirus) especially regarding the impact of public gatherings.

In response to the growing body of information, the Louisville Orchestra board of directors has decided to cancel performances scheduled for this weekend – Friday, March 13 at 11AM and Saturday, March 14 at 8PM at the Kentucky Center. “Out of an abundance of caution and a concern for everyone involved in these performances, we believe cancelling these concerts is the best course of action for our community and stakeholders at this time,” says John P. Malloy, president of the LO board.

Decisions regarding upcoming concerts will be evaluated based on the ongoing community conditions and any further cancellations or postponements will be announced in upcoming weeks.

This decision will have a significant negative financial impact on the LO. We are especially appreciative of our generous patrons who will consider donating tickets purchased for these concerts. These gifts and the support of the community will allow the LO to navigate this challenge and continue to thrive and serve Louisville in the future.

TICKET DONATION or REFUND INFORMATION

These options are available to those who purchased tickets to the Louisville Orchestra concerts on March 13 & 14, 2020.

1. Donate your tickets and receive a gift acknowledgment for the value of the donation. Ticket donations can be made online by emailing to info@louisvilleorchestra.org (name, phone, CID, seat locations), by phone, or in person.
2. Receive a refund for the value of the ticket. Please call the ticket office that handled your purchase – either the Kentucky Performing Arts (all online single tickets, drive-thru and walk-up) at 502-584-7777 OR Louisville Orchestra (all subscribers) at 502-587-8681.

Your tickets do NOT have to be processed before the performance. Ticket refunds and donations will be accepted for these performances through March 31, 2020.

Kentucky Performing Arts Ticket Office
501 W. Main, Louisville, KY
502-584-7777
Mon-Sat:  10AM to 6PM
Sun: 12noon to 5PM

Louisville Orchestra ticket office
620 W. Main, Suite 600
Louisville, KY
502-587-8681
Mon-Fri:  9AM to 5PM

UPCOMING CONCERTS

On Monday, March 16, there will be more information released about upcoming performances regarding cancellations or postponements.
Ticket holders will receive direct communication from the LO patron services by email or phone (recorded “robo-calls) with details and instructions about tickets.

We are managing a significant volume of calls and emails and ask for your patience as we work to keep you informed.

Thank you for your support of the Louisville Orchestra!

Spinning Disks

LO’S LONG PLAYING LEGACY OF CREATING NEW MUSIC

Part 1 of a 3 part series by Bill Doolittle

Teddy Abrams with Sam Hodges 2019

On the day Teddy Abrams was introduced as the new music director of the Louisville Orchestra in 2014 he said a big part of his vision for the symphony would be to rekindle a legacy of the past — the Louisville Orchestra’s pioneering efforts in commissioning, performing and recording new musical works by contemporary composers.

Sam Hodges, a lifelong Louisville Orchestra fan, was listening.

Hodges, who just turned 92 and is still attending Louisville Orchestra concerts, had been around in the era when the orchestra and conductor Robert Whitney staked out an important spot on the musical map by doing what no other American symphony was doing – commissioning new works, bringing the composers to Louisville to conduct their pieces, then recording those compositions on the exciting new musical medium of high-fidelity Long Playing (LP) records.

That all began in 1947, and the effort gained the young Louisville Orchestra (founded just a decade before) excellent national recognition leading to stories in New York newspapers and live appearances on the NBC and CBS radio networks. Soon the symphony’s pioneering musical efforts were being broadcast around the world on the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.

The orchestra began with four to five new commissions each season, specified to be about 10-12 minutes in length.

Overture length. By 1952 it had signed a 12-record deal with Columbia Records. Then in 1954 the Louisville Orchestra hit the jackpot when it won a $400,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant. It was soon premiering a new work each week, in 46-week seasons. It was a separate series from its regular subscription concert schedule. The new compositions were recorded on its own First Edition label.

Robert Whitney with First Edition Record

“The way they’d do it,” recalls Hodges, “is the orchestra would play a new work each week, as well as repeating the three previous weeks compositions, then record usually three or four at one time,” recalls Hodges.

Hodges was always a fan, beginning as a music major at the University of Louisville and through a career as a public school teacher and instructor of music at U of L. Hodges attended nearly every concert, and sometimes was on hand on Saturdays when the orchestra recorded. “That was one of the best things about it,” says Hodges. “You’d hear the new composition, then hear it again for three weeks before they recorded it – so you’d get to know the music, really learn it.

“Then in a few weeks, another new record would arrive in the mail.”

Long after the 1950’s, Teddy Abrams was growing up in the San Francisco Bay area and preparing for a musical career when he came across some of the Louisville Orchestra recordings and became an avid listener.

So on day one in Louisville, Abrams was talking about his personal memories of those Louisville Orchestra recordings. And on day two (or not that long afterward) Hodges decided to give Abrams his entire collection of Louisville Orchestra records and CDs – a complete set containing over 300 new compositions by American and International writing stars.

“I was thinking Teddy Abrams would be the perfect person to have those recordings right at his elbow for research – and maybe even re-program some of them,” says Hodges. “He was very appreciative.

“And,” Hodges smiles, “maybe a little at a loss for words. Which isn’t like Teddy!”

But not at a loss for long.

Since his inaugural season with Louisville Orchestra in 2014, Abrams has fueled his fervor for supporting contemporary composers (himself included) and contemporary performers. The first piece of music on his first Classics concert was his own, Overture in Sonata Form, which was not a commission, nor a world premiere, but was dedicated to both the Louisville Orchestra and the Britt Classical Festival where the work did make its debut.

In 2016, Abrams wrote a song for the funeral of Louisville’s own Muhammad Ali—and that gave a start to a major orchestral presentation celebrating Ali’s life. Admirers of Ali loved the show, and so did critics. For Abram’s first album with the orchestra, the conductor/ composer collaborated with singer Storm Large on a mix-set of new and established music called All-In was released in 2017. In February 2019, the LO debuted Rachel Grimes’ The Way Forth, which is also now a movie.

Taking a different direction, Abrams and the created a piece called “Song of the River,” commissioned by Louisville arts patron Nana Lampton. Both Lampton and Abrams have offices on Main Street with views of the mile-wide Ohio River, and that majestic visage became the inspiration for “Song of the River” featuring singer Morgan James.

Most recently, the Teddy and the LO released an album called The Order of Nature: A Song Cycle, by Abrams and Jim James.

And there’s more on the way, Abrams promises.

“The Louisville Orchestra has a focus on recording that is unique and special about our town, our orchestra, and can’t be found anywhere else,” says Abrams.

“We’re focused on projects that we’ve created or commissioned, relationships with artists that we’ve developed and nobody else has — and documenting that so we can not only share the quality of our orchestra but share the energy of our community. That’s what recording is to us right now.”

NEXT in the series, we travel back in time to discover the origins of the Louisville Orchestra’s magical association with contemporary composers and new music in “The Mayor and the Musician.”

LEO LOVE Giveaway

Enter here to win a free Spring LO Virtual Edition Spring Season Pass.  The LO Virtual Edition includes unlimited access to live and on-demand concerts along with interviews, ensemble performances, and Teddy Talks. (A $75 value). Learn more about the LO Virtual Edition Spring Series HERE

Winners will be selected on Mondays through March 1.

LO Returns to Carnegie Hall

Dear Friends of the Louisville Orchestra,

We are delighted to share the incredible news that next February, Carnegie Hall will present the Louisville Orchestra as part of its 2020-2021 season. Joining the LO for that performance will be dancers from the Louisville Ballet and singer-songwriter Jim James, Louisville native and long-time front-man for the band My Morning Jacket.

Link here to more details about the performance.

We are honored to serve as Louisville’s cultural ambassador to the world, showcasing the incredible art and innovation created in our great city.

You are invited to come along to New York City to celebrate with Teddy Abrams and the talented musicians of the LO. In the coming months, we will offer several levels of tour packages that include tickets to the performance. Sign up now to get on the list to receive this information.

Whether or not you can attend, please consider supporting this project as a sponsor.

Musician Spotlight Kimberly Tichenor

Meet Ms. Tichenor on Friday at 10AM or Saturday  at 6:45PM at the LO Concert Talk with Daniel Gilliam host of Classical 90.5FM WUOL .

Thank you all for supporting your Louisville Orchestra!

I have been a member of the second violin section since 2000 and Assistant Principal Second Violinist since 2010. I also represent our musicians as Co-Chair of the Louisville Orchestra Musicians’ Committee, which is a distinct honor and responsibility in itself.

I feel lucky to share the stage with my amazing colleagues in this crazy ride that is being part of the Louisville Orchestra! We never know what new challenges we will be facing from week to week, and I am constantly impressed by the sheer artistry and agility that our musicians demonstrate on a consistent basis. It takes a huge effort and many, many hours to prepare and perform the wide variety of music we present; I don’t know of any orchestra that keeps it nearly as interesting as the LO! While it is bittersweet to think of the musicians that we have lost to other orchestras, we are so fortunate to have so many fresh faces joining our ranks.

Brahms Symphonies are works that we collectively have spent countless hours mastering. Having served as Union Steward during auditions for a wide variety of instruments, Brahms Symphonies are used to judge the caliber and capabilities of each and every instrument. From Bass Trombone to the violins, Brahms created demands for each instrument. Each time we approach these works, we are comforted by familiarity like that of an old friend — but these works never seem to get easy! I am very much looking forward to presenting this work with my seasoned and new friends at the LO, our ensemble again breathing new life into an old favorite.

CJ Covers LO COVID Safety

Studying airflow, Louisville Orchestra reinvents its musician setup for COVID-19 safety

Kirby Adams

Louisville Courier Journal
Published 6:19 a.m. ET Jan 13, 2021

Let’s forget about ‘us’ for a moment. Let’s forget about all of the questions we have surrounding how an audience can safely attend a live musical performance. The first question should ask is how can the performers, especially musicians, safely occupy the stage during a global respiratory virus pandemic?

That’s the quandary the Louisville Orchestra has worked hard to address as COVID-19 has closed down orchestras, theaters and entertainment venues across the country.

At its core, the Louisville Orchestra is a large group of musicians, many of them blowing vigorously into instruments, that sit in close proximity to each other indoors. A perfectly normal set up, way back in the year 2019, but in 2021 and beyond amid COVID-19, it’s a potential hotbed of viral spread.

So how has Teddy Abrams, the musical director and conductor of the Louisville Orchestra, continued to bring music to the city? Frankly, we were amazed, but not surprised, by the lengths the orchestra and its director has taken to create a safe environment for its members.

While many orchestras around the country are silent, Abrams, with his usual optimistic and inventive style, has sought out ingenious ways to continue to bring the sound of hope to our city through virtual concerts performed safely from the stage at Old Forester’s Paristown Hall, 724 Brent St.

“We didn’t sit around hoping everything would go back to the way it was,” he said. “We accepted that this was a change to the world structure and we dove right in because we felt music is something that the community really needs from us now.”

One of the first adjustments was to move from the orchestra from its home at Kentucky Center’s Whitney Hall in downtown Louisville to the smaller but newer Paristown venue. The 28,000-square-foot concert hall, which opened in July 2019, has just what the group needs to safely produce virtual concerts — built-in cameras, enough state of the art microphones for the entire orchestra and a high-quality ventilation system.

That ventilation system and Andrew Kipe — former executive director of the Louisville Orchestra, who is now with the Peabody Institute at John Hopkins University — were key to figuring out how the orchestra could safely perform together.

Kipe and his team at the Peabody Institute are on the front lines of studies being conducted to understand safety protocols for musical performances during the pandemic.

“John Hopkins has a big group of really smart people reviewing studies from around the country and once they’ve been reviewed, we offer our suggestions for best practices,” said Kipe. “For instance, smoke studies have effectively demonstrated the path aerosols, the smaller droplets of the virus, take as they move through a space.”

So where would the air that is blown through a trumpet or trombone in Louisville’s Orchestra end up in Paristown Hall? To find out, the orchestra conducted similar smoke tests which tracked airflow once it left the instruments.

The orchestra discovered the air didn’t flow straight up into the ventilation system. Instead, it moved diagonally, then up and spent some time hovering over the stage.

That was a problem since the loudest instruments, which blow out the most air, are seated at the rear of the stage, meaning that air from the brass section would act like a spray gun aimed at the people playing their violins and cellos at the front of the orchestra.

“So besides socially distancing the musicians, we needed to mitigate the airflow coming from the winds and brass,” said Abrams. “We flipped the entire stage. Now the strings are seated behind the brass and wind instruments.”

To a non-musician, that might not seem like a big deal, but orchestras have been set up with strings in the front and wind instruments and brass in the back for about 300 years.

“It’s a little bit like a football team that is now playing on a field that has grown to three times the size,” Abrams explained. “As a player, you are now running 300 yards and the offense now has to play defense and vice versa. The strings are now at the back and the winds are in the front. No orchestras sit like that.”

But they did it anyway. Acoustically the new configuration took some getting used to.

So did playing a trumpet or trombone with the bell covered by a mask, another recommendation from Kipe’s team at John Hopkins University.

“I use a two-layer microfiber cover over the bell of my trumpet to block the droplets of aerosol from traveling farther than merely exhaling,” said Alexander Schwarz, principal trumpet player of the Louisville Orchestra. “The cover does add a fuzzy element to the sound, it feels a bit duller, so I would say I have adapted by articulating more.”

And adapt they did. The entire company is on board.

“It’s fun to see Teddy attack this in a way that is ambitious and still safely pushing the boundaries of what we can do, which honestly is what he has always done,” said Schwarz. “It’s kind of a beautiful thing to see him adapt in ways that keep us challenged as musicians and still putting out a product we can be proud of while keeping music alive during this time.”

Of course, Abrams and the performers comply with more common safety procedures that we have all become hyper-aware of in the past year. Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, every member is tested for COVID-19. The performance space is sanitized after each use and members who don’t have to blow into their instruments wear masks throughout the concert.

At least half of the performers are further protected by plexiglass shields, which muffle the sound but keep any potential spread of the virus at bay.

“The very first days were very, very tough with the plexiglass, masked instruments and being so spread out. It’s harder to pick up on acoustical cues,” Abrams said. “But it only took a couple of days and they had already started to figure it out in their brains and make the adaptations to make it successful. Now they know how to do it. It’s like they learned a new skill.”

It still isn’t safe to invite an audience into the venue, but the empty space allows orchestra members to utilize the massive floor area in front of the stage as a socially distanced spot to set up before and after a rehearsal or performance. The same area was used during a recent virtual performance that included a singer who was situated on a platform floating in the middle of the room.

“You would never normally have a singer 30 feet away from the conductor but it was the safest way to accomplish this and it was exciting to figure it out,” Abrams said. “We’re not an orchestra with massive reserves that would allow us to do whatever we wanted during a crisis like this. We’ve just been very realistic and inventive. We all believed that if we could deliver something that people in Louisville really wanted  and needed at a moment like this, then people would support it.”

Reach Kirby Adams at kadams@courier-journal.com or Twitter @kirbylouisville.

Louisville Orchestra Online Concert Series 

The Louisville Orchestra has adjusted, reinvented and found ways to thrive in a new way for its upcoming spring concert series. Concerts will be available for streaming. Subscribers to the Louisville Orchestra Virtual Edition will also have access to on-demand content and other music with details to be announced.

LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA SPRING CONCERT SCHEDULE

• Classical Pairing: John Adams Chamber Symphony and Mozart Symphony No. 39. Live-stream: Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m.
• Homecomings: Musical Journeys of Uncommon Folk. Live-stream: March 6 at 7:30 p.m.
• Abrams Plays Ravel. Live-stream: March 27 at 7:30 p.m.
• Wailing Trumpets: Ragtime + Jazz. Live-stream: April 10 at 7:30 p.m.

All dates, times, guest artists, and programming are subject to change. For information about the purchase of the Spring LOVE access, visit louisvilleorchestra.org/concerts. For conversions of previously purchased tickets, call the Louisville Orchestra Patron Services at 502-587-8681.

available on-demand

Musician Spotlight Scott Staidle

Scott Staidle is the guest for the LO Concert Talks with Daniel Gilliam on January 17 & 18. The Concert Talks are offered free in Whitney Hall to patrons attending the Louisville Orchestra’s Coffee and Signature Classics Concerts.

Coffee Concert Talk:  10AM
Signature Classics Concert Talk:  6:45PM

VIOLIN
First of all, I want to thank everyone who supports the Louisville Orchestra.

I have been a member of the first violin section since 1980. Having started playing guitar before the violin, I have always been interested in several genres of music. Initially, my primary violin teacher was Alvaro De Granda, assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra.

After attending Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, I received a Bachelor of Music in violin performance and applied strings. While at U of M, I studied violin with Gustav Rosseels and viola with Robert Courte. Both were founding members of the Paganini String Quartet.

Besides being a performer, I’m an ASCAP arranger/composer and publisher. For the Louisville Orchestra pops concerts, I have created the orchestral arrangements for Mel Tillis, Nashville’s Bryan White and Sondre Lerche among others. Currently, I now have four books that are in the catalog of international music publisher Mel Bay. These include violin duets, violin/viola duets and string quartets. My book, Wedding Music for Two Violins, was a favorite on their bestseller list.

In my recording studio, I have created two of my own CD’s, Nuts for the Holidays and Halloween Music by Scott Staidle. Also, I’ve recorded and orchestrated music with Days of the New, a platinum recording group from the Louisville area. While with DOTN, I played electric violin on “LA Woman” on The Doors’, Stoned
Immaculate CD. Last, but not least, I performed with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page on the “No Quarter Tour.” Playing violin onstage with actual members of Led Zeppelin was a thrill of a lifetime.

Teddy Abrams at The Kennedy Center Honors

Broadcast on Sunday, December 15 at 8PM on CBS, The Kennedy Center Honors celebrates the artistry of five icons of the American Arts. Teddy Abrams conducts a select group of musicians from around the world who gathered last weekend to salute Kennedy Center Honoree Michael Tilson Thomas. The celebrated conductor, composer, pianist, and teacher has mentored the careers of hundreds of young musicians through his co-founding of The New World Symphony. However, many in Louisville know that our own conductor Teddy Abrams counts “MTT” as his first and most important musical influence. “Michael has the extraordinary ability to find the ‘ why’ of music and share that. He has a deep understanding of what music wants to convey and how to connect people through the art form,” says Abrams.

Joining Teddy in Washington, D.C. last weekend were former members of the New World Symphony who are now members of the Louisville Orchestra. Trombonist Donna Parks, bassoonist Francisco J. Joubert, and LO Director of Learning and Community/cellist Blake-Anthony Johnson were all directly influenced in their careers by Tilson Thomas. In fact, there are seven current members of the LO who earned a spot in the roster of the New World Symphony before coming to Louisville.

In addition to Tilson Thomas, the Kennedy Center selected music pioneers Earth, Wind & Fire, actor Sally Field, singer Linda Ronstadt, and the television show “Sesame Street” to recognize their exceptional impact on generations of Americans through their creativity and body of work.

The award program will be aired in Louisville metro on WLKY-TV.

Link to the CBS video of the broadcast.

Link to complete information about The Kennedy Center Honors.

Book of Travelers Program Notes

by Andrew Adler

If music is supposed to be transportive, taking a listener from Point A to Point B presumably with some kind of defining inspiration along the journey, then this program by the Louisville Orchestra might be just the thing to simulate a listener’s restless soul.

Here the obvious connection has to do with trains. To begin with, we have Arthur Honegger’s “Pacific 231,” surely classical music’s most celebrated evocation of a locomotive barreling down the tracks. Then comes a completely different kind of score: Gabriel Kahane’s “Pattern of the Rail: Six Orchestral Songs from ‘Book of Travelers,’” inspired by an extended train trip the composer took just after the 2016 presidential election. This is not so much in evocation as a rumination about what it means to be an American in the wake of one of the most contentious political spasms in recent memory.

More about that in a bit. But first let’s look at Honegger’s piece, an approximately seven-minute, dazzlingly orchestrated riff on a beast of iron and steam. The composer was an unabashed train buff, who if he’d lived in the latter half of the 20^th century might have eagerly monitored radio communications between conductors and engineers, delighting in the hustle and bustle of nearby rail yards. “I’ve always loved locomotives passionately,” he acknowledged in an oft-quoted confession. “For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses.”

Honneger, a Swiss who was born in the last decade of the 19^th century and lived until the middle of the 20^th, was among the composers of the time who gained the collective moniker of “Les Six.” Besides Honegger, the group comprised Georges Auric, Louis Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre (largely unknown to most audiences) – plus Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc, who along with Honegger achieved the success that largely eluded the previous three.

Honegger could conceive on a large expressive plane when he wanted to – witness his choral epic “Le Roi David,” which took as a subject nothing less than the Old Testament saga of King David. At the opposite extreme were such works as “Pacific 231,” which though they may lack evident scale and expressive depth, possess the telling practical advantage of brevity.

Honegger wrote “Pacific 231” in 1923, when he was barely past 30. The title is no accident: it refers to a specific kind of locomotive with a particular layout of wheels. He first called it “Mouvement Symphonique,” a title that pretty much describes what he was getting at (and which was followed by two other scores cast in the same concise manner).

Listening to “Pacific 231,” there is no doubt about what Honegger was both depicting and honoring. Through a particularly rich palette of woodwinds and brass – including no fewer than four French horns, three trumpets and three trombones (not to mention a quartet of percussionists) – there is a heady sense of gathering momentum and raucous fun. Yet apart from the literal evocation, Honegger seems after something rather more spiritual. He described this as “a very abstract” notion, one that suggested “the feeling of a mathematical acceleration…a kind of great varied chorale.” Indeed, once he has worked through his majestic clusters of fortissimo dissonance, Honegger closes the work with an emphatic, two-bar chord of unison consonance. The train, at last, has reached its destination

Gabriel Kahane: Pattern of the Rail: Six Orchestral Songs from “Book of Travelers”

 “The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I packed a suitcase and boarded Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited bound for Chicago. Over the next thirteen days, I talked to dozens of strangers whom I met, primarily, in dining cars aboard the six trains that would carry me some 8,980 miles around the country. The songs on this album are intended as a kind of loose diary of that journey, and as a portrait of America at a time of profound national turbulence.”

So wrote Gabriel Kahane as an introduction to “Book of Travelers,” a 10-part conversation-consideration amid an abruptly altered America. The hook here is that Kahane is not only a composer steeped in classical norms, but a keen interpreter of his own music, stepping confidently among genres and styles.

“Gabriel Kahane, a Brooklynite singer-composer who sways between pop and classical worlds, has taken the concept of the concept album to rarefied heights” critic Alex Ross wrote as part of a January 2019 column in The New Yorker. “For his recording ‘The Ambassador,’ released in 2014, he created a suite of songs inspired by various buildings in Los Angeles, the title track paying tribute to the venerable hotel where Robert F. Kennedy was shot.”

Kahane’s subsequent creation is similarly, decidedly eclectic. Scored originally for voice and piano, the work was later adapted for piano, voice and orchestra as “Pattern of the Rail: Six Orchestral Songs from ‘Book of Travelers.’” This orchestral treatment is divided into three sections of two songs apiece: Baedeker (Model Trains), Baltimore (Friends of Friends of Bill), and What If I Told You (October 1, 1939/Port of Hamburg).

Reviewing the Nonesuch recording of the original, piano version, Ross remarked that is one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day. “Heady as Kahane’s work can be, it is, first and foremost, an exercise in lyric beauty. He sings in a warm, resonant, melancholic baritone, which coasts upward into a plaintive falsetto. He plays the piano with a poetic touch—his father is the distinguished pianist and conductor Jeffrey Kahane—and his music is suffused with idiosyncratic, enriched tonal harmony. You can hear various influences that inform his style, from Schumann and Debussy to Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell. For the most part, though, he is in possession of his own musical language. At the age of thirty-seven, he is one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day.”

“November,” the song that launches the complete “Book of Travelers,” boasts this nugget of intent:

And I want to tell you/About November,/The people that I met,
 And sleeping badly/On Pullman pallets,/Blue blanket caked in sweat.
 Cardiogram power lines,/Heart of the department of the interior./Glow-in-the-dark Casio,/Breathing fast.
 When last we spoke/I sang of end times/Of cities washed away,
 The bloodless halls,/A flooded station,/Could a train be an escape?

“The quest to empathize with people of different backgrounds could have devolved into a gimmick—the musical equivalent of those by-the-numbers news stories in which big-city reporters visit small towns in search of the ‘real America,’” Ross observed. “Kahane is too canny and self-aware to fall into that trap.”

There’s no shortage of sly, winking references amid “Pattern of the Rail.” When Kahane sings about “Friends of Friends of Bill,” he’s not referring to Bill Clinton, but to Bill Wilson, who co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous. And in what may be the most personal of these six songs, “October 1, 1939/Port of Hamburg,” we find Kahane pouring over recollections from his grandmother, who escaped Nazi Germany on “a steamship from Hamburg to Havana/six months on an island/then New Orleans/then a train to Los Angeles/where she keeps a diary…”

Kahane’s own biography is no less structurally surprising. His press material includes 10 salient points, expressed in puckish, self-effacing morsels. Take Fact One: “Despite his Eastern Euro-Prussian Jewish roots, Gabriel is a devoted Italophile, saucing pasta with obsessive precision (emulsify, emulsify, emulsify!) and spending many a Sunday in the aisles of D. Coluccio & Sons in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where he can often be found ogling sleek packages of bespoke bucatini.”

Ultimately, however, his aesthetic imperative can be distilled by reading Fact Four:

“Questions about genre and categorization seem to crop up like kudzu around discussions of Kahane’s work, which, he admits, draws readily and promiscuously from Romanticism, Modernism, Dadaism, folk traditions, architecture, poetry, experimental fiction, journalistic practice, political activism, and Italian cuisine. But the truth is that he finds these questions somewhat dull, and would prefer that the listener attend to the musical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual content, rather than getting hung up on what to call something.

Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 3 (“Rhenish”)

Among the most characteristic of Romantic-era composers, Robert Schumann possessed a deep connection to the natural world. His Symphony No. 3 bears the popular subtitle “Rhenish,” referring to the Rhine river of Germany, and multiple commentators have drawn a link between this work and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the so-called “Pastoral.”

If nothing else, such comparisons testify to the reality that few composers create in a vacuum, seldom ignorant of who and what preceded them. At the time he wrote the “Rhenish” (1851), Schumann would have been aware not only of Beethoven’s example, but of works by Schubert, Mendelssohn, and perhaps the most extreme example, Berlioz. The five movements of the “Rhenish” Symphony harken back, in a sense, to the five movements of the Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” And while not programmatic on the order of Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique” (written an astonishing two decades earlier), a listener gets the definite impression that Schumann, thematically, is seeking to evoke something extra-musical.

Schumann was not a conspicuously gifted symphonist. He was far more persuasive, both expressively and technically, writing for solo piano and chamber ensemble. His symphonies have been faulted for their imperfect instrumentation, and any number of conductors (Leonard Bernstein, for instance) have sought to “improve” the composer’s original scorings, particularly in the winds. It’s an open question as to whether these tinkerings argue in favor of Schumann or against him. Happily, works like the “Rhenish” are successful enough to make the case that they deserve to be heard — imperfectly perfect as they may be.