Book of Travelers

PROGRAM NOTE

The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I packed a suitcase and boarded Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited bound for Chicago. Over the next thirteen days, I talked to dozens of strangers whom I met, primarily, in dining cars aboard the six trains that would carry me some 8,980 miles around the country. The songs on this album are intended as a kind of loose diary of that journey, and as a portrait of America at a time of profound national turbulence.

— Gabriel Kahane, March 2018

N.B. Book of Travelers is modular. Its fullest expression is a 70 minute monodrama, which can be presented as a solo performance (voice/guitar/piano), as well as with string quartet or full orchestra. Shorter suites extracted from the work are also available upon request, most notably Pattern of the Rail, which weaves together six songs from the album.

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