The results of the 2016 presidential election sent a shockwave through America. On the day after the election, singer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane boarded an Amtrak train at Penn Station and embarked on a 13-day, 8,980-mile journey through America, seeking elucidation. Kahane hoped that by leaving the comfort and security of his East Coast, Brooklyn home, and traveling into the "heartland," he would encounter a cross-section of America that he did not normally interact with, and perhaps gain some perspective. This purposeful odyssey resulted in a collection of compositions that can be found on his recently released album, Book of Travelers. He is currently on tour to support the recording, with a stop scheduled on Jan. 26 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, as part of San Francisco Performances' fourth annual, four-day Pivot Festival, which also includes appearances by pianist Ran Dank, vocalist Paula West, and bass-baritone Dashon Burton.    PHOTO Credit: Josh Coleman San Francisco Classical Voice chatted with Kahane recently about this tour. READ THE Q&A

Around the presidential election of 2016, songwriter Gabriel Kahane decided to take a break from everyday life, escape technology and explore the country by rail. While traveling, he aspired to engage in conversation--but not argue--with strangers of all types of background. This is his brief but spectacular take on how conversations in train dining cars can lead to "radical empathy." Judy Woodruff: Songwriter Gabriel Kahane wrote his latest album, "Book of Travelers," while riding a train across the United States following the 2016 presidential election. In tonight's Brief But Spectacular episode, in the wake of this week's midterm elections, he offers a solution to better understanding those whose political views differ from our own. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} Read the Full PBS: NEWSHOUR Transcript & Watch the Video

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} span.Apple-tab-span {white-space:pre} p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} span.Apple-tab-span {white-space:pre} Gabriel Kahane stopped by the KCRW: Los Angeles studios in Santa Monica to be a guest on Morning Becomes Eclectic today. He spoke with host Jason Bentley about his new album, Book of Travelers, and was joined by the Lyris Quartet to perform several songs from it-"Baedeker," "Baltimore," "8980," "Little Love"-as well as songs from his previous album, The Ambassador. You can listen to the complete session below. Book of Travelers was released on Nonesuch earlier this year. It is a musical travelogue about the looping railway journey across the US he embarked upon the day after the 2016 US election and the people he met along the way. "Exquisitely crafted," says Uncut. "Musically fascinating and hauntingly empathetic." "Extraordinary," says the San Francisco Chronicle; "vivid and wholly original." Rolling Stone calls it a "stunning portrait of a singular moment in America." p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} span.Apple-tab-span {white-space:pre}

This week OPB talks with artists whose work - and sometimes even their mere existence - have caused a kind of social friction. You'll hear from prolific drummer Madame Gandhi, filmmaker and actor John Cameron Mitchell, musician Black Belt Eagle Scout and composer Gabriel Kahane. New York composer Gabriel Kahane was back in Portland for a live theater recording of his latest musical piece, "emergency shelter intake form." How do you write music about homelessness? If you're the Oregon Symphony, you contact New York composer Gabriel Kahane. Kahane, whose work includes a song cycle about Craigslist, was given the monumental task of writing a musical piece that dealt with the ongoing issue of homelessness and poverty. The result was his piece "emergency shelter intake form." When the piece premiered, it was met with a mixture of reactions, including some people walking out. Overall, it was very well received and Kahane came back to Portland to perform a live recording. The symphony's performance got a huge ovation. You'll be able to hear it for yourself, in full, in early 2019, when it's released on iTunes and CD.   PHOTO: Steven Tonthat/OPB p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} LISTEN TO THE OPB SEGMENT

"Book of Travelers," the extraordinary new cycle from singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane, covers a lot of ground in a short space. The texts draw on conversations he had with fellow Amtrak passengers during a self-assigned fact-finding mission in the wake of the 2016 election; the music - unleashed in a two-tone baritone-falsetto combo, against the accompaniment of a soulfully creaky piano - is a vivid and wholly original blend that hints at Kurt Weill, Randy Newman and Robert Schumann without losing its distinctively moody flavor. READ THE FULL San Francisco Chronicle REVIEW

Gabriel Kahane set off on a cross-country train journey on November 9, 2016, the day after Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote for President of the United States. The resultant work was first presented as 8980: Book of Travelers at the 2017 Brooklyn BAM Fest. Now, Nonesuch presents a condensed, studio-recorded version of the work, Book of Travelers. Kahane traveled 8,980 miles on connecting trains, engaging in conversations with countless strangers in dining cars, passengers of every stripe compassing the breadth of the American social and political spectrum. Those conversations serve as the inspiration for the ten songs collected on Book of Travelers, some presenting composites, others focusing upon a particularly memorable individual and conversation. Book of Travelers offers intriguing glimmers into the psyche of America in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. An engaging, sometimes stunning collection of songs, in the end, it serves as a worrisome prologue to what is still unfolding. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} READ THE FULL popMATTERS REVIEW

Gabriel Kahane describes his latest album; Book of Travelers, (Nonsuch Records), as "a listening tour." He talked to about 70 or 80 people and turned the stories they told him into songs. Kahane says that some of the songs, like "What If I Told You," are almost verbatim conversations he was having during his travels. He talked with people for hours about love, economic privilege, race and more. The more people he talked to, the more he found that the divisions we create for ourselves, political or otherwise, are manufactured and superficial. READ & LISTEN TO NPR

Eclectic singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane will make his Oregon Symphony debut as composer and performer with the world premiere of his piece "emergency shelter intake form," an orchestral and vocal work about homelessness. Kahane will take the stage with Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman, Portland vocalists Holcombe Waller and Holland Andrews and Portland's Maybelle Community Singers as part of the third and final installment in Oregon Symphony's "Sounds of Home" series. The concert also features violinist Joshua Bell. READ THE FULL OregonLive ARTICLE

The day after Donald Trump was elected, the songwriter Gabriel Kahane decided to go on a listening tour: crisscrossing America by train and talking to as many people as he could. Leaving his cellphone and the internet behind, he spent two weeks and nearly 9,000 miles on Amtrak, collecting conversations and stories for what would become "8980: Book of Travelers," a song cycle and solo concert - Mr. Kahane accompanying himself on piano - that had its premiere on Thursday night at the BAM Harvey Theater, where it continues through Saturday. A video backdrop, designed by Jim Findlay, showed landscapes, urban and rural, seen from trains in motion. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} Mr. Kahane has built a career where classical music, musical theater and art-song pop meet, alongside occasional collaborators like Sufjan Stevens, Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) and Andrew Bird. He's fond of narratives rooted in geography; his 2014 album (and a Brooklyn Academy of Music theatrical production), "The Ambassador," based songs on Los Angeles locations, and he toured in 2013 with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra performing "Gabriel's Guide to the 48 States," based on WPA guidebooks.   READ THE FULL NYTIMES ARTICLE

PLANES are practical, buses are cheap and cars grant freedom. But trains are for romance. A century after America's railway heyday, the country's ageing trains still enjoy an anachronistic glamour. Few people are immune to the charms of a sluggish, traffic-free chug across states, with the countryside unfurling panoramically. At a dark or uncertain time for the country, a long rail journey from one coast to the other may even inspire some patriotism. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} Such thoughts helped spur Gabriel Kahane, a 36-year-old singer-songwriter, to take to the rails the morning after the presidential election last November. Feeling "increasingly imprisoned by my own digitally curated liberal silo", he was eager to leave behind his mobile phone and spend time with the kinds of Americans he never meets while shopping for quinoa in his Brooklyn enclave. Mr Kahane ultimately spoke with between 80 and 90 people over the course of his two-week, 8,980-mile trip , during which he slept and ate on the train. The effect, he says, was therapeutic, "a kind of salve". It also made possible a kind of cross-cultural engagement that he is sure he will never have again. READ THE FULL Economist ARTICLE

On Nov. 9, 2016, I boarded the Lake Shore Limited, Amtrak's overnight service from New York to Chicago. I had with me a small suitcase stuffed with a week's worth of clothes, half a dozen books, a bright blue Casio wristwatch, and a cheap digital camera I'd picked up at Best Buy on my way to Penn Station. My phone remained at home. Over the next 13 days, I would log 8,980 miles aboard six trains, traversing 31 states, subsisting mainly on Three Cheese Tortellini with Creamy Pesto Sauce and Vegetable Medley. During this time, I had conversations with upward of 80 strangers, almost all of whom I met over meals in the dining car. Aside from what I was told by other passengers, I consumed no news in any form during my trip. - Gabriel Kahane   

READ Kahane's FULL New York Times piece   Brooklyn's NY's BAM: Next Wave Festival presents 3 PERFORMANCES, beginning  Thu, Nov 30 at 7:30pm Fri, Dec 1 at 7:30pm Sat, Dec 2 at 7:30pm p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} WATCH VIDEO

The violinists are fiddling around. They're staggered among the darkened rows of wooden seats in Boulder's 117-year-old, barn-like Chautauqua Auditorium, standing apart from each other in little pools of concentration, tuning their instruments. On stage, the brass and woodwind players and percussionists are tweeting, honking and booming. At 10 a.m., it's already hot inside this unventilated, all-wooden National Historic Place, and these highly trained classical musicians are all clad as if for a beach party: sandals, tank tops, shades. That's how it's been for forty years at the Colorado Music Festival, home to one of the world's classiest pick-up bands. Every summer, orchestra members fly in from around the world to enjoy a sweet six-week summer gig in the scenic foothills of Boulder, performing an ever-expanding menu of music that's shattering distinctions between musical genres and artistic disciplines while still drawing crowds. Is life inside the concert hall getting exciting again? READ THE FULL Westword ARTICLE

One ensemble and one soloist that stand at the vanguard of genre-bending styles are  Brooklyn Rider  and Gabriel Kahane. Both made strong impressions in Boston last year when they performed as part of the Celebrity Series Stave Sessions. Friday night at Sanders Theatre, they came together for a concert influenced by rock, pop, world music, and a little Schubert. Schubert's example set the tone for the evening as the quartet and Kahane performed original songs between the movements of the composer's String Quarter in A minor,  Op. 29, known as the Rosamunde. Brooklyn Rider member Nicholas Cords noted from the stage that the combination of string quartets and songs, even interlinked as they were on Friday, were popular fare in Schubertiades.  READ THE FULL Boston Classical Review READ Boston Globe REVIEW

Gabriel Kahane poses a timeless rhetorical question in "The Fiction Issue," his finely wrought new album: "What's a day without a doughnut?" He's singing in the guise of someone headed out for coffee, bathed in bright morning light. But the darkening shivers of his arrangement for string quartet, played by Brooklyn Rider, set up an emotional pivot: He's still numb from a wrenching loss, and his daily routine provides only meager distraction. Mr. Kahane is deeply in his element here, sketching vignettes with ruminative grace. He wrote "The Fiction Issue," the six-part song cycle at the heart of his album, as a Carnegie Hall commission for voices and strings. Shara Worden (who records as My Brightest Diamond) is the other vocalist, her chamber operatic soprano offset by Mr. Kahane's conversational baritone, singing a series of art songs that can just as readily evoke Robert Schumann as Paul Simon.   READ THE FULL New York Times REVIEW

Gabriel Kahane is not an artist easily pinned down to a certain genre of music, labeled as a lyricist, or pigeonholed as a pianist. He strives for songwriting that's lyrically poignant and melodically complicated, yet delicate and accessible enough for even the most mainstream-pop-attuned ears to enjoy and understand. "I think music is just a way of me filtering my experience of the world and spitting it back out in some aestheticized, and hopefully, emotionally resonant way," Kahane said. He is bringing his first album of chamber music, "The Fiction Issue," to Stanford University's Bing Concert Hall on Friday, Jan. 29, where he's performing alongside the string quartet Brooklyn Rider. READ THE FULL PaloAltoonline ARTICLE READ SFGate ARTICLE READ THE Connecticut PR Piece READ THE Hartford Courant POST READ THE San Francisco Classical Voice ARTICLE READ THE Washington Post ARTICLE READ Boston Globe ARTICLE

Two Crossover Media Artists - String quartet Brooklyn Rider and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane will perform pieces from Brooklyn Rider's latest album, "Almanac," and Kahane's "The Ambassador" and "Bradbury Studies" for Boston's Celebrity Series on Feb. 5, 2016, 8 p.m. at Sanders Theatre. No strangers to each other, they performed "Come On All You Ghosts," a three-part song cycle featuring Matthew Zapruder's poem verses as lyrics, together at Kahane's first solo showcase at Carnegie Hall back in 2012. They were also featured in the Celebrity Series' Stave Sessions in March. SEE THE WBUR: Boston PAGE

The liner notes to Gabriel Kahane's concept album "The Ambassador" (penned by LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne) are detailed and evocative, just like the music they describe. Kahane, whose background is in classical composition, wrote each song on "The Ambassador" about a different intersection in Los Angeles, using location as an inroad to the city's mythologies. "Bradbury" reimagines the iconic final scene in "Blade Runner" with gentle chaos; the finger-picked ballad "The Ambassador Hotel" commemorates the shuttering of a Hollywood landmark through the eyes of its beloved doorman; and the vast, poignant "Empire Liquor Mart" mourns the death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, a black teenager whose shooting became a catalyst for the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Even without its elaborate backstory, Kahane's music is utterly arresting, by turns complex and moody, lyrical and moving. WBUR: Boston selected The Ambassador as one of their 10 Favorite Albums From 2014

What springs to mind when you think of Los Angeles? Most will immediately think of sun, surf, and superficiality. The city of nearly 4 million falls victim to a heck of a lot of stereotypes considering its size and diversity. But we native Californians (even Northerners who are, ahem, not always fond of our neighbors to the South) know LA is a lot more complicated than the rest of the world would have you believe. The composer Gabriel Kahane spent the first two years of his life in Venice Beach, but he grew up primarily in Upstate New York and Northern California. It wasn't until adulthood that he began to understand the rich history and complexity of his birthplace. His newest CD, The Ambassador, is a wonderful tribute to Los Angeles in all its beautiful and gritty glory. The album, released on Sony, is a testament to Kahane's versatility as a singer and songwriter. It provides proof (as if we needed it) that classical, indie and pop needn't exist apart from each other. READ THE FULL Classical King: Seattle 'Second Inversion' REVIEW.

Gabriel Kahane's critically acclaimed new album The Ambassador draws its inspiration from a multitude of sources to tell intimate, human stories against the backdrop of Los Angeles architecture and popular culture. Released on June 3 via Sony Music Masterworks, The Ambassador is a collection of ten songs for ten buildings in Los Angeles. A fully staged version of The Ambassador starring Kahane, directed by Tony-winner John Tiffany (Once, Black Watch) will be presented this season at BAM, UCLA, and Carolina Performing Arts. READ THE FULL Broadway World ARTICLE.

Gabriel Kahane's triumphant new album The Ambassador (Sony Masterworks) is a song cycle that casts a loving eye on Los Angeles architecture by naming each of the 12 tracks after a specific LA location, such as classic Hollywood eatery/drinkery Musso and Frank's; 304 Broadway, where parts of Blade Runner were filmed; and Union Station. The record's centerpiece, "Empire Liquor Mart (9172 S. Figueroa St.)," is a nine-minute tour de force about the heartbreaking case of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old African-American girl who was shot in the back of the head and killed by a store owner in 1991 while trying to purchase a bottle of orange juice. READ THE FULL Huffington Post REVIEW.

Who says you have to be a high school graduate to go to Brown University? Well, in most cases you do, but Gabriel Kahane is an exception. The 33-year-old "indie-classical" musician and composer goes beyond musical genres in every way possible, particularly on his new album, The Ambassador. L.A.-born, New York bred Kahane recently found himself back in his birth-state, enraptured by the architecture and history of a city that gets a bad rep for being transient, superficial, and bottomless. The Ambassador focuses on the little known history of L.A.: its buildings and stories; its hopefulness and tragedies. I met up with Kahane at Littlefield in Brooklyn before a recent show, as he was rehearsing with his three-piece orchestra. He crooned poetic lyrics while playing the piano, and was quick to jump on and off stage to direct the band towards a more "perfect" sound. Afterwards, we spoke about his inspiration for his new album, the restrictions of musical categories, and his newfound interest in architecture. READ THE FULL Jewcy INTERVIEW.

Gabriel Kahane is a composer/musician/singer/songwriter who divides his time between the club and the concert hall. He has been commissioned by, among others, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. His musical, February House was produced by The Public in New York City. His latest album, The Ambassador, is a meditation on the underbelly of Los Angeles seen through the lens of ten street addresses. We spoke with Gabriel Kahane about the album recently. LISTEN TO THE WAMC: Albany INTERVIEW.

One of the year's very best albums has arrived in a comparatively low-key, unheralded manner-as often happens-and this is something you really shouldn't miss. The Ambassador, the latest work by singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Kahane, aims to tell the story of Los Angeles. With a diverse array of songs bearing addresses in their titles, such as "Musso and Frank (6667 Hollywood Blvd)," and "Union Station (800 N. Alameda St.)," Kahane's impressive work focuses on buildings, architectural styles, characters both real and fictional, and an unexpectedly sophisticated, artful perspective. It is not your usual lowest-common denominator play, as its appearance on Sony Music's Masterworks label might indeed imply. READ THE FULL Yahoo Music REVIEW.

Singer-composer Gabriel Kahane becomes the latest in a long list of artists who've tried to gauge the emotional temperature of Los Angeles with this era- and genre-hopping song cycle, The Ambassador, which explores the psyches of a cross section of characters. Each song is designated with a particular street address, adding perspective to the voices and world-weary insights - call it more songs about buildings and disillusion. Theatrical and structurally complex, Kahane's allusive vignettes traverse the worlds of folk-pop, noir-y jazz, and classical music, and feel like pieces of a larger work. The LA native's overly cerebral approach, sometimes steeped in irony, can be distancing, even as his resonant baritone yields intimacy. The best songs are the most visceral: "Slumlord Crocodile (115 E. 3rd St.)" overflows with rage and loathing, while the despairing centerpiece, "Empire Liquor Mart (9127 S. Figueroa St.)," explores the life of a 15-year-old African-American girl murdered in 1991 to stirring effect. It all adds up to a collection often as rewarding as it is challenging.

A sense of place provides more than a casual significance on The Ambassador (Sony Masterworks), an affecting new concept album by Gabriel Kahane. Inspired by the topography of Los Angeles, it's a collection of songs that draw meaning from specific points on the map, some enshrined in popular culture (the Bradbury Building, Musso & Frank Grill) and others known for darker reasons: "Empire Liquor Mart (9127 S. Figueroa St.)," memorializes a teenage African-American girl shot and killed by a shopkeeper in 1991. Mr. Kahane is a singer of gentle warmth and composure, and a composer with a seemingly endless reserve of strategies, constructing some tracks like chamber pieces and others like indie-pop singles. He has impeccable taste in collaborators, like the multi-instrumentalist Rob Moose and the singer Shara Worden, and he knows how to fold them into a whole. But the most remarkable thing he achieves here, in song after song, might just be his vivid yet subtle articulation of empathy. -Nate Chinen

Gabriel Kahane grew up in a world of classical music. His father, Jeffrey Kahane, is a concert pianist and director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. With his new album, The Ambassador, this week, Kahane takes a big leap in his transition from classical polymath to pop songwriter and rock musician. He hasn't given up any of the complexity of his music; several songs are intricate contraptions of poly-rhythm, odd time signatures, harmonic shifts, and deft melodies that weave through it all. Conceptually, The Ambassador examines Los Angeles through its architecture. (Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthore wrote the liner notes.) The album delves into themes of darkness, light, culture, and history, using a street address as a starting point for each song. READ THE FULL Mother Jones ARTICLE

Though NYC-based Gabriel Kahane wasn't raised there, The Ambassador feels like a musical tour of Los Angeles. The album makes 10 stops in the city where the composer and singer-songwriter was born and only came to appreciate later in life, each with a specific address used as the song title. There's the imaginary post-apocalyptic picnic at "Griffith Park (1800 E. Observatory Ave.)," where, Kahane says, "I have frequently gone up and looked out over that vista, feeling the pulse of the city at night." He also pays tribute to author Raymond Chandler with "Musso and Frank (6667 Hollywood Blvd.)" by setting the song in the steakhouse frequented by both Chandler and the protagonist in The Long Goodbye. Listen to Gabriel Kahane's interview on NPR Morning Edition with Renee Montagne.

Composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane is preoccupied with place. In 2012, Kahane brought to the Public Theater February House, a musical inspired by the 1940s Brooklyn home where artists Carson McCullers, W.H. Auden, and Benjamin Britten lived communally. And last year, with Gabriel's Guide to the 48 States, a playful take on 1930s travel guides that premiered at Carnegie Hall, he interpreted the many shades and sounds of America. "In literature, there is such a strong tradition of novelists or short-story writers who are really tied to some geographic location," Kahane explains by phone, "the way Philip Roth is obsessed with New Jersey. That is an inspiration to me."

With his newest project, The Ambassador, which comes out next week, Kahane turns his attention to a more personal geography: his birth city of Los Angeles. "There's the L.A. of film and TV," he says, "and then there's this vulnerable city: the city that burns, that's subject to earthquakes, to the Santa Ana winds, to floods." It is the unvarnished L.A. that interests Kahane. And so he composed ten songs, each anchored to an address, exposing the soft underbelly of a city most known for its surfaces.

Born in Venice Beach, Kahane, now 32, left the city young and grew up on the East Coast and in northern California, where, he says, he was "doubly primed to hate L.A." Returning in his mid twenties, however, he found himself "more and more in touch with the ache of the city." It was his time spent in a home renovated by architect Rudolph Schindler that led him to seek out the work of other Southern California modernists-John Lautner, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright-and gave him a thread with which to weave together an album encompassing the vastness of the city.

In his L.A. album, Kahane seems interested not merely in architectural structures (singing of "a cantilevered beach house with clerestory windows"), but also in the lives lived inside them. Assuming the perspective of different characters-the doorman of the now-closed Ambassador Hotel, the heroine of the James M. Cain novel Mildred Pierce, a young victim of inner-city gun violence-he covers a wide swath of L.A.'s history and demographics.

The Ambassador will be released on June 3rd, and, in the winter, will be performed live at BAM in a production directed by John Tiffany. In the meantime, here is an exclusive first listen of "Veda (1 Pierce Dr.)," a song off the record inspired by the fictional L.A. home of Mildred Pierce. Listen to 'Veda (1 Pierce Dr.).'

Gabriel Kahane, like many New Yorkers, held a certain disdain for the puffy glamour of Los Angeles. Growing up, he saw the California city as "this den of the superficial," says the musician. As he began spending more time in L.A. as an adult, "I became more and more aware of everything about the city that is not perceived by outsiders." This reconsideration fueled his new album, The Ambassador. With its shades of Sufjan Stevens and Simon and Garfunkel, it's singer-songwriter meets pop, but with the tools of a classical composer. The project focuses on Los Angeles's culture and architecture. "My hypothesis was that Los Angeles had much more of a soul than I give it credit for, and that hypothesis was confirmed," Mr. Kahane says. The singer-songwriter and composer, age 32, has maintained a foothold in both the pop and classical worlds. He wrote music and lyrics for "February House," a musical about a communal literary house in Brooklyn Heights that ran in 2012 at the Public Theater in New York, and his 2006 song cycle "Craigslistlieder," which uses Craigslist ads as the lyrics, has been performed at Lincoln Center and elsewhere in the U.S. The debut Sony Masterworks album, which releases on Tuesday June 3rd, is a milestone for Mr. Kahane: both a major label's endorsement of his classically informed pop, and a concept album. It's set to become a fully staged production directed by Tony-winning director John Tiffany, to be performed at a handful of venues across the country, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in the fall. READ THE FULL Wall Street Journal REVIEW.

Singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane isn't short on talented collaborators in his latest album The Ambassador: the work features contributions from Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), composer and violinist Caroline Shaw and vocalist Aoife O'Donovan. But Kahane shines on his own, from the layered instrumentals to the heartfelt vocals. The album is set for release on June 3, and in anticipation for the release Kahane has composed a video for his song "Bradbury (304 Broadway)," designed to serve as a response to the 1982 Ridley Scott film Blade Runner. "I knew that I wanted to do a video for this song, but that there was no way I could compete with the extraordinary production design of the movie," said Kahane. "So live action seemed out of the question. What Manual Cinema has achieved so beautifully here is all done with incredibly simple technology: shadow puppets, overhead projectors, and the silhouette of a single actor. Rather than illustrating the story of the song, they've created their own narrative riff off of the original film." Watch the video for Bradbury (304 Broadway) at Paste Magazine.

Composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane says that the inspiration for his new album, The Ambassador, is 10 buildings in Los Angeles - appropriate, given what a gifted musical architect he is. The Ambassador is structured as a set of 10 vignettes, each a meditation on life in the City of Angels (as well as its many demons). The narrative of each song is located at a particular L.A. street address, on a time scale that skips around the city's history, from the 1940s to the present. Working with that as his framework, Kahane slips in and out of guises brilliantly, from the noirish brass slides and growls he gives "Musso and Frank (6667 Hollywood Blvd.)" to the folky feel of "Ambassador Hotel (5400 Wilshire Blvd.)," whose cadences recall Simon & Garfunkel. A mere talented mimic would take each of these personae on and off as a clever party trick; here, Kahane weaves enough contemporary threads from one song to the next to make a coherent whole. READ THE FULL NPR: First Listen PIECE.

Countless musicians have concocted concept albums built around all sorts of subjects, places and artistic influences. But far fewer concept albums can double as tour guide. Enter Gabriel Kahane, the prolific songwriter and composer whose latest work, The Ambassador, draws inspiration from the architecture and culture of Los Angeles. While Kahane was raised on the East Coast and in Northern California, he was born in L.A., and as such, delivers a detailed sense of place in ten songs -- each one representing a different location in the city. Cleverly, Kahane's songs affix an actual address to their titles: "Black Garden (2673 Dundee Pl.)"; "Empire Liquor Mart (9172 S. Figueroa St.)"; Union Station (800 N. Alameda St.)" and so on. If one were to pinpoint these spots on Google Maps, the record would make for an fascinating soundtrack to that journey, especially as songs hop from one genre to the next -- from complex chamber pop and playful folk to jazz and new classical compositions. But more, The Ambassador uses this framing device as a backdrop to tell wistful and hyper-specific stories about himself and characters that inhabit this world and give it depth. Kahane's Los Angeles feels like a timeless amalgamation, with references to L.A.-centric pop culture and news: Raymond Chandler novels, Die Hard and Blade Runner, the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra, riots and earthquakes.  The Ambassador was co-produced by Kahane and frequent collaborators Casey Foubert (Sufjan Stevens), Matt Johnson (St. Vincent), and Rob Moose (Bon Iver) and features guest spots from singers Aoife O'Donovan, Holcombe Waller, and Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond -- who all give voice to the various people in Kahane's songs. The result is an ambitious and deeply personal vision of a city with so much texture to uncover. To hear Gabriel Kahane and his band's session live in the WNYC-New York Soundcheck studio, click on the player below at 2 p.m. ET.