Empire Liquor Mart (9127 S. Figueroa St.) in a tiny apartment

February 9, 2021 9:01 PM

I previously posted about this song, but have never FPPed this performance. Apartment Sessions packed in over 50 performers into a Brooklyn apartment for a full orchestral and choral performance of Gabriel Kahane's Empire Liquor Mart (9127 S. Figueroa St.) [10m54s]. [CW: describes real life events of the murder of a black teenager as a beautiful and thoughtful orchestral piece] Also of possible interest is this behind the scenes, making-of video [10m11s].
posted by hippybear (8 comments total)

Also, I just found this entire discussion of the entire track with analysis both event-driven and musical by peppercoyote that is really a great thing.
posted by hippybear at 9:30 PM on February 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

that was beautiful. Thanks
posted by From Bklyn at 1:40 AM on February 10, 2021

I live Gabriel Kahane’s work, especially the song cycle this is from, and I’d missed this. Thanks so much for sharing it!

If you’re unfamiliar with Kahane, you can do worse than start with Craigslistlieder, which is Craigslist posts set to music.
posted by sgranade at 10:04 AM on February 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

Thank you for this, hippybear. He's one of my top 10 all-time, and I totally missed this treasure—this actually awesome rendition of a truly and tragically beautiful epic.
posted by angelplasma at 10:15 AM on February 10, 2021

Topically related, the Oscar-shortlisted documentary, A Love Song for Latasha, is most definitely worth your 19 minutes, if you're in a Netflix-enabled household.
posted by mykescipark at 12:33 PM on February 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

When I have a moment to really sit down and focus, I look forward to listening to this. Thanks for posting it.

A brief listen to some of the Craigslistlieder reminds me a lot of the spirit of Harry Partch's "Barstow - Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California".
posted by cnidaria at 6:48 PM on February 10, 2021

Thanks for sharing this. I watched this a while ago, pulled in from Adam Neely's channel (the making-of video linked above) and it led me down a rabbit hole of the Apartment Sessions and Gabriel Kahane. One interesting thing I ended up on is the under-watched Yogev Gabay, a drummer who has a running series breaking down songs with polyrhythms or complex time signatures. Here's his video on Kahane's Bradbury (304 Broadway), which is from the same album.

The other takeaway from this is that holy cow, are there a lot of amazing musicians in New York. Which of course I kind of knew intellectually, but wow - Apartment sessions really puts it into perspective.
posted by sauril at 9:29 PM on February 10, 2021

Apartment Sessions really puts it all into just a few rooms, really!
posted by hippybear at 7:52 PM on February 11, 2021