Disc 1
1 Knotty Pine – Dirty Projectors + David Byrne
2 Cello Song (Nick Drake) – The Books featuring Jose Gonzalez
3 Train Song (Vashti Bunyan recorded, written by Alasdair Clayre) – Feist + Ben Gibbard
4 Brackett, WI – Bon Iver
5 Deep Blue Sea – Grizzly Bear
6 So Far Around the Bend – The National (arrangement by Nico Muhly)
7 Tightrope – Yeasayer
8 Feeling Good (popularized by Nina Simone) – My Brightest Diamond
9 Dark Was the Night (Blind Willie Johnson) – Kronos Quartet
10 I Was Young When I Left Home (Bob Dylan) – Antony + Bryce Dessner
11 Big Red Machine – Justin Vernon + Aaron Dessner
12 Sleepless – The Decemberists
13 Stolen Houses (Die) – Iron and Wine
14 Service Bell – Grizzly Bear + Feist
15 You Are The Blood – Sufjan Stevens

Disc 2
1 Well-Alright – Spoon
2 Lenin – Arcade Fire
3 Mimizan – Beirut
4 El Caporal – My Morning Jacket
5 Inspiration Information (Shuggie Otis) – Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
6 With A Girl Like You (The Troggs) – Dave Sitek
7 Blood Pt 2 (based on original song “You are the Blood” by the Castanets) – Buck 65 Remix (featuring Sufjan Stevens and Serengeti)
8 Hey, Snow White (Destroyer) – The New Pornographers
9 Gentle Hour (Snapper) – Yo La Tengo
10 Another Saturday (traditional song) – Stuart Murdoch
11 Happiness – Riceboy Sleeps
12 Amazing Grace (traditional song) – Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues
13 The Giant Of Illinois (Handsome Family) – Andrew Bird
14 Lua – Conor Oberst + Gillian Welch
15 When the Road Runs Out – Blonde Redhead + Devastations
16 Love vs. Porn – Kevin Drew

The audience at the Philharmonic might be described as hard-core classical: mostly people fifty and older. Later that day, a different crowd showed up to see the singer, songwriter, and composer Gabriel Kahane perform at Le Poisson Rouge, the lively Greenwich Village club that mixes classical music with other genres. Kahane is twenty-seven, and his listeners seem roughly the same age. He is well on his way to developing an original creative personality; his music absorbs everything from nineteen-twenties neoclassicism to blue-grass and modern indie pop, with potent melodies bridging the disparate styles. In league with a six-piece ensemble called yMusic, Kahane presented his song cycle “For the Union Dead,” on poems of Robert Lowell. The texts challenged Kahane’s knack for teasing singable lines out of complex language; at times, the music seemed verbally overstuffed. But in a setting of “The Drinker” Kahane hit a vein of desolate beauty, dwelling obsessively on the phrase “foundering down.” His greatest asset is his sonorous, mesmerizing baritone; he brings to mind Sinatra in his wee-small-hours mood. Sinatra, of course, would have charged more than ten dollars.

Other recent press:
Gabriel Kahane is an NPR programmer’s wet dream… From a sonic standpoint, Kahane’s restlessness and ingenuity match the precociousness of his words, the album often abandoning pop’s expected patterns of build and release with a less-predictable approach that comes closer to musical theater. – Pitchfork

There is nobody else within the pop-music sphere making music even remotely as sophisticate as what you’ll hear on Gabriel Kahane. This music for the ears, the intellect and the soul, and an auspicious debut LP from one of the most prodigious talents we’ve got. – Prefix Magazine

The instrumental parts, at times, might be purely classical compositions all by themselves, thoughtful, and above all wrought — carefully balanced, with contrasting melodies coexisting with each other, along with complex rhythms, and little strains of music that register like sharp, sure thoughts, or like imagines in a carefully crafted short story. – The Wall Street Journal

(Pick of the week) It’s no surprise that Gabriel Kahane has worked with Sufjan Stevens; they share a proclivity for intricate, beautiful pop fashioned from myriad instruments, with a nice line in softly delivered vocals. Kahane is a 27-year-old Brooklyn musician whose work flits between classical composition and artful pop. In September, his self-titled debut album of immaculate pop tunes was released. – The (London) Independent

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