Community dinner is the bridge between Gabriel Kahane's ‘Magnificent Bird’ and ‘Book of Travelers’ at the Hancher

It's appropriate that there is a community dinner in between performances of Gabriel Kahane's albums, 2022's "Magnificent Bird" and "2018's "Book of Travelers“ Sunday at Hancher Auditorium.

The Hancher composer-in-residence created a pair of compelling projects that generate plenty of conversation.

Kahane, 44, spent a year entirely offline. From October 2019 to October 2020, the singer-songwriter disconnected and moved from Brooklyn to Portland, Oregon.

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"I was feeling that the Internet was driving us toward this limited way that we perceive each other," Kahane said. "I thought about all the debts accrued due to the Internet compared to all of the convenience we enjoy. There is this idea that if we don't adopt every new technology that we'll be left behind. It's just not true."

So Kahane left the Internet behind and was surprised. The cerebral Brown University alum thought he would become closer to people sans Internet, but it didn't work out that way, partly due to lockdown during COVID-19.

"I thought I would interact more with people but a few months into this experiment, the pandemic happened and then I moved to this unfamiliar city," Kahane said. "I ended up living a monastic type of existence. I grieved losing the place where I lived for so many years. The project I embarked on was turned on its head due to the pandemic."

Kahane, who left Brooklyn for Portland to become the inaugural creative chair for the Oregon Symphony in 2019, immediately wrote songs at the conclusion of his grand experiment.

"I wrote a song a day in October of 2020 as a way of documenting my brain space at the end of that project," Kahane said. "I granted myself permission to write about small things. I didn't have to write grand, epic songs. I didn't have to deal with the enormity of it all even though the world had changed so much."

"Book of Travelers" was born after a very different exercise by Kahane, who embarked on a 9,000-mile road trip throughout the United States in 2016 without a phone or Internet. Kahane dispensed of devices and sonic excess in the studio. The spare album features just Kahane's voice and keyboards.

"Social media was pushing the narrative being cleaved into culture about ideological lines," Kahane said. "You know by living in Iowa that doesn't hold up under scrutiny."

Kahane's theory that Americans are more alike than different held up over the 13-day jaunt, which covered 25 states as Kahane traveled from New York to Chicago to Portland to Los Angeles to New Orleans back to Gotham City.

"I had more than 100 conversations over meals," Kahane said. "It was inspirational and unforgettable."

The songs didn't come as quickly with "Book of Travelers" as it did with "Magnificent Bird" but the tunes, which are covered with empathy, eventually arrived.

Kahane has been adept at crafting personal tunes throughout his deep canon of eight albums. Kahane, much like fellow songsmiths Fiona Apple and Neil Young, escorts fans into his world, and it is most effective throughout "Magnificent Bird" and "Book of Travelers."

There are few singer-songwriters as versatile as Kahane, a pianist-composer who is as comfortable in pop as he is in jazz, theater and classical environments. Kahane has crafted large-scale orchestral works, piano sonatas and string quartets.

"I like to challenge myself," Kahane said. "I like variety."

Kahane just announced that his next album, "Elevator Songs," will be released in April. "Elevator Songs" features the exceptional vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. However, don't expect Kahane to preview new tunes at Hancher since the focus will be on "Magnificent Bird" and "Book of Travelers.

"I'll tour behind the new album in a couple of months," Kahane said. "The Hancher is one of the commissioners of the project. I'm excited about it, but I'm focusing on what I'm doing now, which is coming back to Iowa City."