#Craigslistlieder

[radiodark]

Gabriel Kahane’s song cycle Craigslistlieder, which sets Craigslist ads to voice and piano. Performed by Amy Broadbent and Christopher Koelzer.

[whosfeelingyoungnow]

How lucky am I to not only be consistently surrounded by great music, but also to be able to meet its creators? Even if I get incredibly bashful around them and he may have warned me he was a little sweaty. Last night was the fourth time I’ve seen Gabriel Kahane play, and I was more blown away than ever. His music is so honest, raw, beautiful, and out-of-the-box that it’s impossible not to love, he plays a mean Dichterliebe, and Craigslistlieder is guaranteed to have me in tears of laughter. Thank you so much, Gabriel Kahane, for the art you bring to the world and for being so good to your fans time and time again. (at The Old Church Concert Hall)

[gabrielkahane]

Tickets are on sale for all these dates! 

[brutefury]

1, 2, 5, 17?

1 . been listening to crying laughing loving lying by labi siffre Non STOP lately also on the road trip we’ve listened to bob marley legend like 12 times

2 album i wish i could hear for the first time again is craigslistlieder by gabriel kahane , i remember it taking me by surprise the first time i heard it and just being something completely funny and unique and talented to boot

5 another perfect album : to love somebody by nina simone

17 theres SO many people i would travel back to see : nina simone , talking heads , ros serey sothea, johnny cash , etc etc etc

send me a number !

[tjmartin45]

Month of Inspiration Day 1: The Fiction Issue

Following @the-sassy-composer ‘s lead, I’m going to also be participating in the Month of Inspiration!  Every day, I’ll be posting pieces that inspire me to write music or that made me into the musician I am today!

To start, here is Gabriel Kahane’s The Fiction Issue.  This piece follows two people living on opposite ends of the country in the aftermath of 9/11.  This piece was the first real contact I had with any music that straddled the gap between traditional classical music and pop music, but it represents a lot more than that to me.  Gabriel Kahane doesn’t have a lot of Classical training.  By trade, he’s a Singer-Songwriter (an amazing one, in fact), and, after writing Craigslistlieder, found himself falling ass-backward into writing more classical music.  In this piece, you can hear him trying out new classical techniques he hadn’t tried before, experimenting with a new medium he didn’t have too much experience in.  Listening to this piece that way, as an experiment, I find inspiring because it reminds me that I don’t have to be 100% confident in every note I write.  Sometimes, you can try new things, and maybe they work and maybe they won’t.  But trying them is important, and maybe you’ll make something beautiful on the way.

Thanks again to @the-sassy-composer for this amazing idea!!  If you want to hop on and post about things that have inspired you, I’d love to hear about them!!

[appropriate-as-always]

so Craigslistlieder exists

[beginningspod]

It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.

On today's episode, I talk to composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane. Originally from Venice Beach, California, Gabriel has been making albums for almost a decade and a half, starting with his self-titled album which was released on Family Records in 2008. Gabriel comes at much of his songwriting from a conceptual standpoint - on his 2014 album The Ambassador, he used ten addresses in LA to write songs from the perspectives of characters both real and imaginary, his 2018 album Book of Travelers was based on a cross-country train trip he took, and his first concert work Craigslistlieder set real Craisglist ads to music. In addition to his songwriting, Gabriel has also been commissioned to write dozens of pieces for orchestras, festivals and theaters, and his latest album Magnificent Bird was just released at the end of March on Nonesuch Records!

(Photo by Jason Quigley)

I'm on Twitter here and you can get the show with:

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[itsactuallycorrine]

I was tagged by @bethanyactually. Thank you! I love this one.

Rules: put your music on shuffle and list the first 10 songs.

1. Jumpers - Sleater-Kinney (Live in Paris)

2. Outside of Space and Time - David Byrne & St. Vincent

3. Absolute - The Fray

4. The Baseball Game - Falsettos (2016 BCR)

5. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend theme song (season 1)

6. Home Sweet Home -  Mötley Crüe

7. Need You Tonight - INXS

8. Today I Met - Gabriel Kahane (from his Craigslistlieder, which is hilarious)

9. Life’s a Happy Song - The Muppets (2012) soundtrack

10. Believe - The Bravery

super no-pressure tagging: @crazyassmurdererwall, @peacefulboo, @bgonemydear, @ponyregrets @sarcasticfina @peglegsjones and whoever else wants to do this

[un-nmd]

Recent listening—

Gabriel Kahane, Craigslistlieder (2007) Proper new-age harmony in meticulous pianistic textures they’d call “supple” or something, yes, supple, e.g. that’s what reeked off many a program note to Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maître. This is even more personal and yet not as uncomfortable as you’d expect because it’s also ragingly pretentious, quintessentially millennial, and most importantly, genuinely funny. “Oh old friends / I remember you well” followed by right-hand echo and first you think, god, that’s gorgeous. And then you remember the lied’s titled “Half A Box of Condoms”.

Sergei Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2 (1907) Chills at every reappearance of the motto theme. The Dies Irae semblance ain't the brightest trick but compared to the outright quotation in mvmt. 2 it's hardly bothering at all; who knew a three pitch theme could be so monumental? The earth practically crumbles as trumpets hail its final sounding at the close of mvmt. 4. For other supersymmetries, see: horn figures in mvmts. 1 and 4 resembling the solos in mvmt. 3. And also: the mvmt. 2 trumpet march (after the fugue) resurrected in mvmt. 4, in a triplet guise.

Arcade Fire, Everything Now (2017) Oh nooooooooooooooooo.

Death Grips, Bottomless Pit (2016) Some of the most important words I’ve recently heard were those from Stefan Burnett on inner struggle vs. surface reality. Perhaps from elsewhere it would seem arrogant to boast mistrust of fellow men and women but he’s no haughty misanthrope. The haughty is the part that’s wrong; misanthrope, yes. And so it’s MC Ride vs. Stefan Burnett, another brutal duality, and the main reason why Death Grips is the one of the most interesting art projects going round right now. The actual content, the surface level noise, is dangerously close to irrelevance.

Carl Nielsen, Wind Quintet (1922) The ‘supple’ descriptor returns again to haunt; is it just a synonym for ‘chamber’? No, for you wouldn’t apply it to, say, Brahms or Schumann. But you would to Mozart, and definitely to the Nielsen Wind Quintet, so what we have here is really neo-classicism rather than neo-romanticism. Hence the opening sonata-allegro (complete with exposition repeat), hence the theme and variations. Pleasurable to listen to, and even more pleasurable to play.

[innypocket]

This is actually a recording of an entire Audra McDonald concert from 2013 (with some weird cuts...to cut out some of the applause I think?). It has a similar, but definitely not identical, set list to the concert I saw last night. I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but! it has Craigslistlieder!

(Lieder is an art song. Craigslistlieder is a modern lieder, using Craigslist content as its poetry. If you like Audra singing Yahoo Answers, you’ll probably like this.)

The first one starts at 55:14 (and, fyi, has objectification of a person having a seizure…stay classy Craigslist), but the second is unquestionably incredible and starts at 56:10.

[gabrielkahane]

Tickets on sale Monday, January 9th. I’ll be taking this program to a bunch of other cities. 

[nedison]

If Anyone Knows... - Gabriel Kahane (2007)

Craigslist posts set to music. WHY has it taken me so long to discover this?

[chokopoppo]

Have you guys heard of Craigslistlieder?

it's a series of short songs with all the lyrics taken from various craigslist ads the composer found floating around the internet. really weird or bad ones. And seriously? Oh my God. Oh my God.

You can listen to all of it here.

((Warning: nsfw (though not inherently sexual), dark humor, general craigslistiness.))

[overhear1123]

Merging the old & the new: Craigslistlieder = the traditional German art song ("lider") format + the topic of a Craigslist ad for each song

Holy shit it's so joyous and inspirational and hilarious.

This particular track is a Craigslist ad for a girlfriend. "Must enjoy video games, must own a video game system, my parents refused to buy one for me. No Ugg boots. No Long Island."

Gold

[danisnotadj]

Just a reminder that Craiglistlieder is a thing.

[gabrielkahane]

Hello,

Winter, again. Not much daylight. I hope you all are safe and sound. A few things to tell you about this month: I’ve long been meaning to publish a corrected edition of Craigslistlieder, which I wrote 15 years ago. It was one of the first pieces of music I ever wrote down; as such, there were some basic things about music notation I didn’t fully grasp at the time. Life intervened, and it took, well, quite a while to correct, proof, etc. Rather than put it out on its own, I’ve decided to pair it with twelve of the highly silly Twitter songs (Twitterkreis) I started posting on social media back in 2018. So in this single volume, you’ll find all eight movements of Craigslistlieder, newly engraved, plus “God’s Perfect Killing Machines,” “Marie Kondo,” “Fleischlied für Mitt Romney,” and so much more. It’s the perfect gift for anyone who enjoys singing weird found text art songs, which, I assume, since you are reading this, means YOU. Snag your copy here.

I am so unbelievably excited about the Open Music concert with Missy Mazzoli on January 4th at Mississippi Studios in Portland. (For those of you just joining us, Open Music is a series that I run as part of my Creative Chair position with the Oregon Symphony.) Not only will Missy be in the house, we’ll have a special reading by Pulitzer-finalist Karen Russell, whose story “Proving Up” was the basis for Missy’s opera of the same name. There’ll be music by Tania León, Shelley Washington, J.S. Bach, Benjamin Britten, Missy Mazzoli, and the premiere of a new arrangement of a song that Missy wrote for me TEN YEARS AGO, which I’ll sing alongside a string quartet of Oregon Symphony musicians. Missy, in addition to being one of the most dynamic composers working today, is a fascinating and deeply intelligent human being. I’m thrilled & honored to get to spend a night in conversation with her and the music that moves her. Seating is extremely limited, so get tickets now!

Back in March of 2020, just as the world shut down, I was supposed to travel to Orlando, Milwaukee, and Detroit, in consecutive weeks to participate in performances of emergency shelter intake form. While Milwaukee and Detroit are still working to reschedule their performances, I’m thrilled that the Orlando Philharmonic will be performing the piece on January 8th. The brilliant Aaron Diehl will be playing the Gershwin Concerto in F on the first half. Tickets are here. A new feature of this newsletter! A few things that I’ve been listening to/reading that have moved me of late. Sound: Caroline Shaw/Sō Percussion - Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part Sam Sadigurksy - The Solomon Diaries Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Sings Newman

Text: Karen Fields & Barbara Fields - Racecraft Lewis Hyde - The Gift George Packer - Last Best Hope Emmanuel Carrère - Lives Other Than My Own In case you missed it, I released a new song last month. You can stream/download it here. (Free/name your price.) I can assure you that more music is on the way… Thank you as always for your support. I’m grateful to each and every one of you. Please follow me on bandcamp and/or sign up for my newsletter by sending an email to gabrielkahanelist at gmail dot com. (I'm trying to limit my engagement w/ surveillance capitalism, but very much want to be in touch with you!)

Best wishes,

Gabriel