Earlier this year composer-singer-storyteller Gabriel Kahane was named creative chair for the Oregon Symphony beginning with the 2019-2020 season.
In a press release from the Oregon Symphony in August Kahane said, “I’m honored and humbled to have been invited to take on a more substantial role with the OSO in the coming years.” He says he takes his new responsibility seriously in that he has “a desire to see an increasing commitment to new music at the OSO, and, in particular, music written by those who’ve been historically shut out of the concert hall.”
Kahane’s duties over the next two seasons will include writing and performing 3 new works for the OSO while serving as a consultant for contemporary works to be programmed on the orchestra’s Classical series. He will also spearhead the creation of two new concert series. One of which is described as an indie concert series that will pair pop artists and composers. The other series will be called Open Music.
Kahane elaborated on the latter via Instagram: “I invite a musician – generally a composer, though not always – to open their brain onto the stage through a concert of their own design.”
Open Music’s inaugural offering will take place in March of 2020 and feature the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw.
Kahne announced the concert on Instagram saying Shaw is “an absolute dream guest for our first concert: she is brilliant, kind, relentlessly creative, and an eloquent advocate not only for her own work, but for any art that’s important to her.”
Tickets go on sale Tuesday, October 8. Click here for more info on this concert!
You can read more about Gabriel Kahane’s new role with the Oregon Symphony here.
Here is Shaw’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Partita for 8 Voices:
A New Canon 