The piano soloist Jeffrey Kahane, whom we learned at the pre-concert lecture has performed this work perhaps more than any other, certainly gave Gershwin his due. Sometimes bouncing on his chair, sometimes making the piano thunder and never missing a note or beat, we heard and saw his fingers fly over the keyboard with muscle-memory informed finesse.
For many in the audience the Gershwin opener expertly performed by soloist Jeffrey Kahane was the highlight of the evening. For this writer, however, Gershwin and father Kahane seem more like the very good warm up act for what followed -- emergency shelter intake form by Kahane’s composer/singer son Gabriel, creator of what one can presume is the world’s only symphonic work named for a bureaucratic form.
The title speaks to one of the libretto’s main foci—the check-all-that-apply intake form one needs to fill out to gain entrée to an overnight homeless shelter. Anyone who has felt the frustrations of fitting their person and situation into a multiple choice form will likely similarly find themselves initially hooked by this premise. Composer Kahane though does much more—especially by giving voice also to the many homeless who are not mentally ill or substance abusers, but jettisoned from their homes because of unexpected medical bills or similar personal catastrophes that they hadn’t planned on. High on this list of these causes for the unexpected slips into the abyss of homelessness are the subprime mortgages of recent financial collapse history that Composer Kahane manages to explicate in rhyming couplet style! (SPOILER ALERT!) Some might similarly find the sardonic wit of ode to NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) as woven from the same cloth as Phil Ochs’ Love Me I’m a Liberal as the even better pièce de resistance. The libretto in so many ways shouts Hey , this is about YOU too! -- on the one hand remarking at how financial ruin is just one medical bill away, and on the other hand, pointing out that the mortgage deduction of $750,000 that any homeowners in the audience are expecting when they sell is at the expense of the homeless.
Some in the audience might feel that this political exposition is piled on a bit too deep and high. This writer instead bristles at the report that Festival Director Kalmar didn’t get this commissioned in our city, the one allegedly of “make no small plans” traditions, but rather did so at his winter gig with the Oregon Symphony.
