Last Friday I was back at Herbst Theater for a dual concert with the Kahanes, père & fils, presented by San Francisco Performances. It was actually their season-opening gala (sort of, as it was preceded by a couple of other concerts), though I was there only for the concert (there was a dinner which was a separate ticket). In fact when I bought my ticket last spring I'm not sure I realized it was part of a gala. I just like the Kahanes.
Gabriel emceed with his usual genially askew humor. He started by saying he was surprised when the gala was suggested to him, as he didn't think he had that level of glamorous renown (my phrasing, not his), until he realized that maybe if you put him together with his father the combination was enough to qualify as a gala host. And indeed most "galas" feature big star performers, usually in something light &, this is important, short. That's one reason I generally avoid galas. But having the Kahanes host is offbeat enough to say good things about San Francisco Performances, & their attitude, both serious & playful, to what they do: expect musical surprises & artistic pleasures, not boldfaced names & fancy attire (actually, a lot of the audience was more dressed up than the performers, who wore basically black jeans & long-sleeved t-shirts, which is what I was wearing, so I did not feel out of place).
The program was mostly announced from the stage. As the concert slipped into the "past performances" archive on SFP's website, it was not updated with the playlist, as I had thought it might be, so I'm going by memory here. They opened with three "composed folk" songs, sung by Gabriel to piano accompaniment by Jeffrey (& I apologize for the obnoxious use of first names, but it seems like the easiest way to distinguish them under the circumstances). The first was by Bob Dylan. I didn't recognize that, or the others, though I liked them.
Gabriel referenced the current insanity under which we live with some musical settings of the words of Robert F Kennedy Jr. He prefaced these by quoting the latest bit of wacky WTFery from that source: that autism (which the Secretary seems a bit obsessed with) is caused by circumcision. (Which is why all Jewish men & many of us gentiles are autistic – my joke, not Kahane's –sorry if it's in bad taste, but it's difficult to know how to react in face of the firehose of free-associative madness we're sprayed with daily.) Gabriel has a bit of a specialty in these witty & appealing settings of found texts, as witness his celebrated Craigslistlieder & his Fleischlieder. This set lived up to their predecessors. One was a parody of the much-parodied William Carlos Williams poem apologizing for eating the plums in the icebox (so I guess not quite a found text in this case) & another was a setting of RFK Jr's admission or boast about having a brainworm. It was epic.
Jeffrey played several short pieces on piano. There was a Mendelssohn "song without words" (which could describe a lot of the piano pieces; both the classical & the folk-ish fit in beautifully with each other). I think there was also a Schumann piece? We had what Gabriel referred to as the lightning round, in which the two men traded off piano solos, segueing seamlessly from one to the other, fortunately without intrusive applause (the audience was attentive & appreciative, which also set this apart from other "galas"). I think it was right before or after this that Jeffrey told Gabriel that his iPad (Gabriel's, which his father was using) had locked out & all the passwords he guessed (birthdates, &c) had failed. I couldn't tell at first if this was an entertaining bit of business or, you know, reality. It turns out it was the latter. In a bold move, Gabriel gave his father the password out loud on stage. I forgot it immediately (I'm not a numbers guy), so if any of you happen to end up with Gabriel Kahane's iPad, you're on your own breaking the code.
There was a long song to a text by Matthew Zapruder. Very appealing, though it was dense & long enough so that it was difficult to take it all in on first listen (this is far from a criticism, by the way). I think then Jeffrey played one of the Schubert Impromptus. Then came the only officially announced portion of the program: the world premiere for two pianos of one of the movements of Heirloom, a piano concerto Gabriel had written for Jeffrey. There was a funny & charming story attached to the movement's title: during the pandemic, Gabriel's very young daughter would only eat chicken, & she used to play in a pretend vehicle her mother had made out of a big cardboard box. So the movement, which was bright & sprightly as well as funny & charming, was named Vera's chicken-powered transit machine. (The original piece has been released by Nonesuch records so you can hear the whole thing, & let's support our artists by buying their art!)
There was one encore; Gabriel announced he would leave us with some Joni Mitchell. She is loved by many whose opinions I respect (including, apparently, the Kahanes) but I do not hear what they're hearing in her. I decided I would try to listen with neutral ears, as if I had not heard the name. I don't know if I succeeded in that or not, as I found it the weakest piece of the evening. No harm done, as it had been an engaging & interesting 90 minutes. The respect & love between father & son was palpable & it was a pleasure sharing in their music-making.
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