On April 3, the two-time-Grammy-winning group “Roomful of Teeth” and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane ’03 released their first collaborative album. “Elevator Songs” is experimental and emotionally charged, immersing listeners in the eerie sonic landscape of an intergalactic hotel.
Kahane opens the record by singing, “To be honest, this hotel is kind of creepy” and later begins the final track of the album by reminiscing, “As long as I can remember, I have always lived in this elevator.” As if taking listeners to each of the hotel’s floors, each of the nine middling tracks features a different member of “Roomful of Teeth” eager to give a tour.
Kahane studied jazz piano at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston before transferring to Brown his sophomore year. During his time on College Hill, Kahane worked on the Production Workshop board and wrote his first musical “Straight Man,” which won a Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Award.
Kahane cites his experience in musical theatre as “the beginning of (his) work as a composer,” describing his most recent project with “Roomful of Teeth” as living at the “intersection between music and theater.” Looking back on his undergraduate years, Kahane said that Brown’s holistic education gave him “the tools, sort of outside of art, to reflect back on the work that I was making.”
“There’s not really a better place than Brown where people are not just thinking critically but sort of taking on the ethical and moral stakes of whatever issue,” he explained.
In early 2022, the members of “Roomful of Teeth” approached Kahane about a potential collaboration. While writing the lyrics of the record, Kahane collected voice memos from the band’s members and interviewed them about their lives as musicians, asking questions like “What’s the weirdest thing that happened to you on tour?” These interview responses ultimately inspired about half of the tracks on “Elevator Songs.”
Mingjia Chen, a vocalist and composer in “Roomful of Teeth,” described Kahane as a “long time hero of mine.” In a message to The Herald, Chen specifically noted Kahane’s “informative and inspiring” approach to songwriting, highlighting “the way he ‘researches’ his material, which was basically just talking to us for an entire day about everything one could talk about.”
Though fans may instinctively open Spotify to hear “Elevator Songs,” only one track off the album — “Not Even the Dead (Room 1212)” — is currently available for streaming on the app. For political and financial reasons, Kahane and the members of “Roomful of Teeth” agreed they wanted the bulk of the album to exclusively be available on independent services.
Kahane encourages listeners to savor the album on online music distributors like BandCamp, Tidal and Qobuz. For “serious” listeners, he recommended the soulful track “Not Even the Dead (Room 1212),” and for “sillier” listeners, he suggested the quirkier “Put It In My Valise (Room 1832).”
To Kahane, music is “not (about) playing in the biggest halls” or “getting fancy reviews,” but the relationship between artists and listeners.
“The thing that makes me want to get up in the morning and write (is) the memories that I hold of interactions that I’ve had with individual listeners who’ve been changed by my music” he said, encouraging young artists to “drill down on the extent to which music is a social act.”
As Cameron Beauchamp, co-artistic director of “Roomful of Teeth” put it, “Gabriel created a songbook that speaks to the authentic narrator in each of us.”
“These songs encapsulate so many different slices of humanity,” Beauchamp said. “My hope is that each listener will find a little piece of themselves in at least one song.”
Kendra Eastep is also a senior staff writer covering arts and culture.
