This is among the top ten most coveted events for the Lane Series to present. The minute we heard about this collaboration, we knew we had to find a way to bring it to our audience. Roomful of Teeth has performed for us twice (including their exquisite “Partita for Eight Voices”, for which composer and Teeth member Caroline Shaw won a Pulitzer), and really, there is no one doing what they do. The sheer creativity and vocal brilliance of their performances resonate in one’s head long after the show is over. And Gabriel Kahane is a musical chameleon and genius with the voice of an angel. Together, they present Kahane’s composition Elevator Songs. 

Elevator Songs is a radio play/song cycle, set in an interdimensional hotel. As the listener is transported through the hotel via the titular (and magical) elevator, she encounters a wide array of stories: a woman on her honeymoon in Utah during pandemic lockdown, a man writing a eulogy for a young AIDS victim in the early 1990s, a podcast host/travel influencer broadcasting from near-future militarized Texas, a military veteran confronting post-traumatic stress disorder in the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more. In sum, the piece is a celebration of the individual voices of Roomful of Teeth—most often heard as a collective—and a showcase for Kahane's artistry as a songwriter and storyteller, singularly focused on the emotional breadth of the human condition.

“Elevator Songs is a celebration of the individual voices that comprise Roomful of Teeth. While the ensemble is widely known for its incredible stylistic flexibility and use of extended vocal techniques, I learned over the course of several workshop sessions with the group at MASS MoCA in 2022 that they are all, unsurprisingly, wonderful singers of tunes. Given my background as a singer-songwriter, it felt natural to use this project as an opportunity to create, in essence, a ‘Roomful of Teeth Songbook,’ an anthology to showcase each voice within the context of a larger work. What you will hear grew out of the first movement, written as a sketch during that aforementioned visit to MASS MoCA...Elevator Songs is dedicated, with love and admiration, to Roomful of Teeth.” – Gabriel Kahane

To introduce this rich collaboration, the program opens with a solo set by Kahane, followed by Caroline Shaw’s piece for the ensemble based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, called “The Isle,” commissioned by the Folger Shakespeare Library and first performed in 2016. Of the work, Shaw says, “When I first began speaking with [Folger Director] Mike Witmore about this piece…we both felt a strong affinity to the language and the musical qualities of The Tempest. In his fascinating book, Shakespearean Metaphysics, [Witmore] points to the potential role of music on the island, and this mysterious relationship between music and language. Of course, I love Prospero’s final soliloquy — the brilliant rhythm of it, the details of its consonance, and his wish to drown his book of spells and words into the sea. As a musician, I had fun taking this as my cue to summon swells of music to swallow up the text in a swirl of voices!”