New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Gabriel Kahane announces new tour dates. Starting this month, on the heels of a critical success at BAM, John Tiffany's staging of The Ambassador travels home to Los Angeles for a two day run at the Freud Playhouse presented by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. Of the staging at BAM, Alex Ross at The New Yorker said, "What mattered most…was the sense that a solitary voice had fostered an original world." The New York Times, in selecting The Ambassador as a "Critics' Pick," wrote that "Mr Kahane's City of Angels is a harsh and hazy pipe dream in which legendary places vanish overnight but somehow never disappear, not as long as artists like Mr. Kahane and Mr. Tiffany can reclaim them from the repository of memories that has been given such resonant life here."
His tour also includes solo shows and a supporting slot for Punch Brothers throughout the western half of the US. Performing in a variety of venues, it is no surprise that Alex Ross of The New Yorker says that Gabriel is "an artist who is equally at ease in the night club, the concert hall, and the theatre."
Die Hard and Blade Runner, race riots and natural disasters, urban blight and austere modernist architecture are all fodder for The Ambassador, a musical investigation of Los Angeles that marks Gabriel Kahane's major label recording debut, and serves as the basis for the stage production. Using street addresses as entry ways into characters as varied as
James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce and the doorman at the long-defunct Ambassador Hotel, Kahane offers ten exquisite songs that seek to rewire our relationship to Southern California.
With direction by Tony-award winner John Tiffany (Black Watch, Once) and set design by Tony-award winner Christine Jones (Spring Awakening,
Queen of the Night), The Ambassador is a love letter, by turns droll and melancholic, to a city long misunderstood. The world premiere took place at Carolina Performing Arts in the fall of 2014, followed by shows at BAM in Brooklyn, NY. The production bows in Los Angeles itself on February 27 and 28 at the Ralph Freud Playhouse, presented by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
Kahane was born in Los Angeles and raised on the East Coast and in Northern California. "Starting in my late teens," he writes, "I began to spend more time in LA. I found myself chasing its soul— its aspiration, its spirit, its sadness— and wanted to express that. I've always had a preoccupation with buildings, and the relationships we form with them. The songs on this album have varying narrative approaches: In 'Bradbury,' I take on the role of Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in the seminal neo-noir film Blade Runner, much of which was shot at the Bradbury Building. In 'Empire Liquor Mart,' I tell the tragic story of Latasha Harlins— a fifteen year old African-American girl shot and killed in 1991, just a year before the LA Riots— from the perspective of the deceased. It is my hope that in this multitude of voices, something new about Los Angeles is said."
Director John Tiffany began his career developing and directing new plays in Scotland, which quickly brought him to international attention. In the
National Theatre of Scotland's first season, he directed
Black Watch, which won multiple Olivier and Critics Awards. For Once, which was created in the basement of a church, Tiffany won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical. Recent projects include The Glass Menagerie on Broadway, which was nominated for seven Tonys. With this project, Tiffany is seeking to create a representation of the mythological LA and the vulnerable, physical LA, using film canisters, cassette tapes, piano rolls, and books to make an impressionistic topography on which Kahane and the band will perform the songs, while architectural videos are projected onto the building models. Brief recordings of text that will allow the audience to enter into new points of view will be discovered on stage.
The Ambassador is an extension of Kahane's creative trajectory in recent years. His musical, February House, which was commissioned and produced by the Public Theater in New York, devoted an entire evening to a short-lived World War II-era commune at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn. More generally, Kahane has found inspiration in sources as varied as Craigslist (Craigslistlieder) and the American Guide Series, published by the WPA during the Great Depression (Gabriel's Guide to the 48 States).
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"One of the year's very best albums." -Rolling Stone/Yahoo Music
The Ambassador is a handsomely crafted album that makes an even better show."- vulture.com / New York magazine
TOUR DATES
The Ambassador Theatrical Production
Feb 27 • Ralph Freud Playhouse at UCLA • Los Angeles, CA
Feb 28 • Ralph Freud Playhouse at UCLA • Los Angeles, CA
Headline Dates:
Mar 16 • Rockwood
Music Hall • New York, NY • (full band)
Mar 17 • Stave Sessions • Boston, MA • (full band)
Mar 18 •
Music Box • Detroit, MI • (duo with Rob Moose)
Opening for Punch Brothers:
Mar 25 • Vogue Theater • Vancouver, BC
Mar 26 • The Moore Theater • Seattle, WA
Mar 27 • Roseland Theater • Portland, OR
Apr 1 • The North Park Theater • San Diego, CA
Apr 2 • The Fonda Theater • Los Angeles, CA
Apr 3 • The Fillmore • San Francisco, CA
Apr 6 • The Depot • Salt Lake City, UT
Apr 7 • Ogden Theater • Denver, CO
Apr 9 • ACL Live at Moody Theater • Austin, TX
Apr 10 • House of Blues • Houston, TX
Apr 11 • House of Blues • Dallas, TX
Apr 13 • Rialto Theater • Tucson, AZ
Apr 14 • Mesa Arts Center • Mesa, AZ
