Haley HeynderickxGuitar/Vocals The Westerlies Gabriel KahaneCurator · Host
PIVOT Festival
Thursday, January 30, 2025 7:30pm
Herbst TheatreVenue Information
$65/$55/$45
About This Performance
Composer/singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane returns as guest curator once again for the tenth season of PIVOT. Kahane’s work exists at the intersection of art and social practice, and he is one of the most thoughtful—and thought-provoking—artists of his generation. He will conduct opening night and host all three evenings of deliciously ingenious music brimming with thought, humor—both dark and light—and substance.
The second night of PIVOT features folk singer/songwriter/guitarist Haley Heynderickx and bold brass quartet The Westerlies in a collaborative program that will showcase new interpretations of Heynderickx’s songbook, covers, and new, unreleased material they’ve created together. Heynderickx’s work draws from a wide array of influences, including her religious Filipino-American upbringing, the folk music of the 1960s and ’70s, jazz radio, and the acoustic guitar styles of Leo Kottke and John Fahey. NPR hails The Westerlies as “skilled interpreters who are also adept improvisers,” while The New York Times describes them as “an arty quartet…mixing ideas from jazz, new classical, and Appalachian folk.”
Program
To be announced
Performance Sponsors
Christian Jessen
The PIVOT Festival is sponsored by:
Artist Information
Performer Biographies
Hailed as “one of the finest songwriters of the day” by The New Yorker, Gabriel Kahane is a musician and storyteller whose work spans the theater, club, and concert hall.
Highlights of the 2024–25 season include a return to the New York stage in a production at Playwrights Horizons of two solo works, Magnificent Bird and Book of Travelers, which Gabriel performs in repertory. In addition, he tours as a duo with fellow composer/performer Caroline Shaw in the United States and Europe, including performances at the Philharmonie de Paris, Wigmore Hall, and the Concertgebouw. This season also witnesses the premiere of a clarinet concerto for Anthony McGill, a solo debut with the Orchestre National de Lyon, as well as Kahane’s San Francisco conducting debut in Carla Kihlstedt’s 26 Little Deaths.
Gabriel’s discography includes five LPs as a singer-songwriter; The Fiction Issue, an album of chamber music with string quartet Brooklyn Rider; as well as emergency shelter intake form, an oratorio exploring economic inequality through the lens of housing insecurity. That work, commissioned and recorded by the Oregon Symphony, has also been heard in San Francisco, Chicago, and London, with a New York premiere this season at Trinity Church Wall Street. Upcoming recordings include Heirloom, a piano concerto written for his father, the noted pianist and conductor Jeffrey Kahane; as well as the debut album from Council, an ongoing project with violinist, composer, and conductor Pekka Kuusisto.
As a theater artist, Kahane made his off-Broadway debut with the score for February House, which received its world premiere at the Public Theater in 2012. He made his Brooklyn Academy of Music debut in 2014 with The Ambassador, in a production directed by John Tiffany. In 2018, he wrote incidental music for the Broadway revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery, starring Elaine May.
Kahane maintains a diverse roster of collaborators from various corners of the musical universe, ranging from Phoebe Bridgers, Paul Simon, Sufjan Stevens, and Sylvan Esso, to the Danish String Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, and Attacca Quartet. As a writer, he has been published by The New Yorker online and The New York Times; a newsletter and collection of essays on music, literature, and politics can be found at gabrielkahane.substack.com.
A two-time MacDowell Fellow, Kahane received the 2021 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon, where he serves as Creative Chair for the Oregon Symphony.
The Westerlies, “an arty quartet…mixing ideas from jazz, new classical, and Appalachian folk” (New York Times) are a New York-based brass quartet comprised of Riley Mulherkar and Chloe Rowlands on trumpet, and Andy Clausen and Addison Maye-Saxon on trombone. From Carnegie Hall to Coachella, The Westerlies navigate a wide array of venues and projects with the precision of a string quartet, the audacity of a rock band, and the charm of a family sing-along.
Formed in 2011, the self-described “accidental brass quartet” takes its name from the prevailing winds that travel from the West to the East. “Skilled interpreters who are also adept improvisers” (NPR’s Fresh Air), The Westerlies explore jazz, roots, and chamber music influences to create the rarest of hybrids: music that is both "folk-like and composerly, lovely and intellectually rigorous” (NPR Music).
The ensemble has produced numerous critically acclaimed albums of genre-defying music. 2022 saw the release of the Songbook Vol. 2 and Live at TOURISTS on Westerlies Records, the ensemble’s in-house record label. The previous year was a prolific year for the ensemble, with the release of Fireside Brass: A Westerlies Holiday (Westerlies Records), Songbook Vol. 1 (Westerlies Records), and Bricolage (Westerlies Records), a collaborative album of improvisations with pianist/composer Conrad Tao. 2021 also saw the release of This Land, the ensemble’s collaboration with Grammy®-nominated vocalist Theo Bleckmann. Sought-after collaborators, The Westerlies are also featured on recordings by Fleet Foxes (Nonesuch), Big Red Machine (Jagjaguwar), Vieux Farka Touré (Six Degrees Records), Common (Lakeshore) and Dave Douglas (Greenleaf).