Art & Parenting & A Trip Across the Atlantic

In which we alert you to some freshly announced overseas gigs, and discuss (briefly) the ever-present challenge of work/life balance.

Hello, friends. I don’t know how it’s been for y’all, but over here, it’s been a truly chaotic month. Like, vintage Ryan Trecartin chaotic. But before we look back (I’ve got a few thoughts to share about the last few weeks), let’s peer into the near future, shall we? [Cue ascending, whole-tone harp glissando.]

Next week, I’ll make my first trip across the pond since “the before times,” en route to a solo concert in London and a pair of dates with my biggest musical bro crush, the Danish String Quartet. (Both of the DSQ gigs are currently sold out, but some additional tickets will go on sale on 13 November. Tickets for the London gig are £25 and are available here.)

I’m also happy to announce a string of shows in Europe next March, including my first appearance at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. Complete tour dates are here.

Alright. Having wrapped up our busy work, let’s rewind.

I don’t quite know how to talk about last week, suffice it to say that it was among the most challenging that I’ve experienced as a parent and musician. I wouldn’t bore you with the vagaries of raising two small kids were it not for the fact that those trials intersect, if only tangentially, with the themes of the piece I was premiering (about which more in a moment).

Long story short: my older daughter came down with the flu just as I was recovering from my first bout with Covid (on the heels of a two-week tour), and then our eleven-month-old got hit with a nasty respiratory virus—apparently not flu!—just as the other one was on the mend. (For those keeping score, this meant that my partner was effectively solo-parenting for fully a month (tour + isolation + in-town rehearsal/gig absenteeism). Between rehearsals and performances for The Right to Be Forgotten—my weird little one-act folk opera which had its world premiere with the Oregon Symphony, November 4-7—my partner and I were in and out of the urgent care clinic, up at night trying to make sure that our baby could breathe, cleaning up vomit (the little one could not seem to keep ibuprofen down), and trying to explain to our four-year-old why we were, despite our best efforts, so singularly focused on her little sister.

I don’t tell you this in order to extract pity. Parents around the world are dealing with the same shit all the time. What was notable (to me) about last week was that the medical challenges we faced presented me with a stark choice: show up for my family, or prepare for my premiere—there simply was not the time to do both. I chose the former, leaving my (fairly substantial) role in the opera unmemorized, and, if I’m being honest, shakily learned.

But the piece itself is, in some sense, about the tension between career and community, and the ways in which our digital regime trains us to believe that the value of our lives (and our cultural and social capital) derives from likes, clicks, comments, and retweets attained in some indeterminate and abstract public space, rather than from the investment we make in our families and real-life social circles. Like Nathaniel Levitan, the character I play in the opera, I am trying to teach myself to do less of the former and more of the latter.

The first half of The Right to Be Forgotten deals largely with the digital realm, and its tendency to warp our priorities and sense of order. The second half explores life away from “The Feed,” and, in particular, Nathaniel’s relationship to his family during his year off the internet. The coda is, you might say, a synthesis of those two registers of experience. There was something weirdly cathartic about showing up for work totally depleted, but doing the best that I could, and feeling that art was imitating life or perhaps the other way around. So much of the text I sang those four nights seemed to justify my decision to prioritize family over work.

Overall, the piece came off well. People laughed at the funny bits and cried at the sad parts, which, hey, what more can I ask for? I’m exceptionally grateful for a wonderful set of collaborators who threw themselves into the piece with aplomb: David Danzmayr, Nathalie Joachim, Alex Sopp, Holcombe Waller, and the always-game Oregon Symphony. I’m looking forward to getting a bit of distance from the piece and then perhaps making some tweaks before we bring it to Cincinnati in January.

L-R: Holcombe Waller, Nathalie Joachim, Alex Sopp, Governor Kate Brown, moi, and Maestro David Danzmayr after the premiere in Salem…

Lingering coughs notwithstanding, both kids are now healthy, and we’re attempting to re-establish some sense of familial normalcy, to which end, I’m gonna go make a ragù. It’s cold and grey here in Portland, and the best antidote to late fall doldrums, as far as I’m concerned, is ridged tubular pasta with some slick & gamey meat sauce.

Take care, and see you soon.

Gabriel

We did it!