Back of the Choir

PROGRAM NOTE

I first met the poet and classicist Anne Carson through a mutual friend in 2008. I had only recently become aware of her work, and was shocked when a colleague announced that we would be staying at her house following a concert in Ann Arbor. Years later, at a dinner in Detroit, she invited me to appear in a short play of hers that was to be presented, on a single afternoon, by New York Live Arts. In the piece, a two-hander, she played “the sky,” and I played her interlocutor, Rusty Godot.

At some point in the play, “the sky” holds forth on qualities of shade: forest shade, lake shade, poplar shade, highway shade, etc. I was charmed and moved by the speech when I heard Anne read it, and was delighted to find it published some months later as a poem in The New Yorker. I asked for her permission to set it to music; she consented, and this piece came to life.

— Gabriel Kahane, 2016

LISTEN

Listen on Apple Music

PURCHASE