Heirloom
10/9/2025 • 4 tracks • 26 minutes
GABRIEL KAHANE (b. 1981)
Heirloom
1. I. Guitars in the Attic 14:58
2. II. My Grandmother Knew Alban Berg 10:29
3. III. VERA’S CHICKEN-POWERED TRANSIT MACHINE 5:31
Jeffrey Kahane, solo piano
4. Where are the Arms (Orchestral Version) 4:33
℗ 2025 Nonesuch Records, under exclusive license from Gabriel Kahane
A MOVING EXPLORATION OF INHERITANCE AND FAMILY TIES.
“Tucked away in the northernmost reaches of California sits the Bar 717 Ranch, which, each summer, is transformed into a sleep-away camp on 450 acres of wilderness, where, in 1967, two ten-year-old kids named Martha and Jeffrey met. Within a couple of years, they were playing gigs back in L.A. in folk rock bands with names like “Wilderness” and “The American Revelation.” They fell in love, broke up, fell in love again. By the time I was a child, my mom and dad had traded the guitars, flutes, and beaded jackets for careers in clinical psychology and classical music respectively. But they remained devoted listeners of folk music. Growing up, it was routine for dad to put on a Joni Mitchell record when he took a break from practicing a concerto by Mozart or Brahms. That collision of musical worlds might help to explain the creative path I’ve followed, in which songs and storytelling share the road with the Austro-German musical tradition.
That tradition comes to me through the music I heard as a child, but also through ancestry. My paternal grandmother, Hannelore, escaped Germany at the tail end of 1938, arriving in Los Angeles in early 1939 after lengthy stops in Havana and New Orleans. For her, there was an unspeakable tension between, on the one hand, her love of German music and literature, and, on the other, the horror of the Holocaust. In this piece, I ask, how does that complex set of emotions get transmitted across generations? What do we inherit, more broadly, from our forebears? And as a musician caught between two traditions, how do I bring my craft as a songwriter into the more formal setting of the concert hall?”
— Gabriel Kahane