after the silence, a change of scene

The last time I posted here was in November of 2019. Needless to say, that was a different era. A few weeks after I shared that cryptic photograph with a post office box address, I began an extended digital hiatus, about which I’ll have more to say in the coming months. In the meantime, I wanted to say hello. There has been a whole lot of grief, loss, and trauma around the world, in our country, in our cities, in our communities, and within our families. And it continues. Three people very dear to me have died in the last year, and I imagine that many of you have experienced similar losses. I hope you’re all doing okay, and I send all my love. And with that…

Two Concerts in San Francisco; a world premiere

Next week, I will play my first concerts since the pandemic began. If you happen to be in the general vicinity of San Francisco, I will be appearing at Herbst Theater on July 17th and 18th as part of a new summer festival presented by San Francisco Performances.

On Saturday the 17th, at 7:30pm, I will give a solo concert featuring a dozen new songs written in October 2020, drawn from thirty-one composed that month. The program will be rounded out with selections from Book of Travelers, The Ambassador, and Where are the Arms. Tickets may be purchased here.

The next afternoon, at 2pm, I’ll join (as pianist) the wonderful tenor Nicholas Phan in a wide-ranging survey of song, including music by Caroline Shaw, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Esperanza Spalding; a whole lot of Schubert; and the world premiere of Final Privacy Song, an eighteen-minute work I’ve written for tenor and piano on a new poem by Matthew Zapruder. Tickets are here.

A New Publication

Ten years ago this September, I released my sophomore album, Where are the Arms. Yesterday, at long last, several boxes of piano/vocal scores for those songs arrived at my doorstep. I’ve arranged them all for piano & voice as I play them, with chord symbols for guitar where appropriate. They will begin shipping out today, and you can pick up a copy here. And for the cellists & violists in the room…

emergency shelter intake form

Just as the pandemic ensnared the world in its vice grip, I was preparing, alongside soloists Alicia Hall Moran, Holland Andrews, and Holcombe Waller, to bring emergency shelter intake form to the Orlando Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony, and the Milwaukee Symphony.

While it was disappointing to see those concerts go up in a puff of smoke (in addition to performances planned by the San Francisco Symphony and Louisville Orchestra), I am happy to share a video of the entire piece (found t the bottom of this post), captured in Portland in August of 2018 during a free community concert presented by the Oregon Symphony, which, along with the Britt Festival, commissioned the work.

On its face, emergency shelter intake form is a piece that addresses homelessness. But at its heart, it’s a cry against inequality, not only the kind that results from ruthless, unregulated capitalism, but also the sort that manifests when we close our hearts to other human beings, treating them as if they exist in some discrete universe of misfortune distant from our own. If nothing else, I hope that esif shrinks that distance, and may help us to recognize that we, too, might be one medical emergency or job loss away from having to make wrenching decisions about how to devote our limited material resources.

Oh, and there’s an album, too.

Thanks to the generous support of members of the Portland community, we were able to document the aforementioned performance of emergency shelter as an album. The physical object, which has the feel of a hardcover book, was designed, along with its stunning cover, above, by the stupidly gifted composer-pianist-graphic designer-bean cooker Timo Andres, and includes a forty page booklet with the compete libretto. The album, in physical and digital form, is available for purchase here.

In Conclusion

My time away from digital spaces was intended, in part, as a diagnostic for my not-always-super-healthy relationship to the internet. Those who follow me on social media may (or may not!) have noticed that I’ve been silent on those platforms since late 2019. It’s my hope going forward to use them sparingly (if at all), and to communicate more frequently through bandcamp’s messaging platform, which, because it is not an ad-based service, is not wrapped up in surveillance capitalism, its pernicious algorithms, and/or the attendant destruction of democracy, etc. And of course, I will continue to post here from time to time.

Thank you as always for your support,

Gabriel