Pekka Kuusisto is an acclaimed violinist. Gabriel Kahane is a composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist.

Both classically trained, both comfortable inside and outside the box, they wander those sometimes strange, sometimes quirky, but always beautiful borderlands where creativity thrives.  

They come together in a new collaboration, commissioned for recording and performance by an international partnership including Musica Viva Australia. The relaxed, intimate evening is an exploration of what it means to be artists in the 21st century; artists for whom honouring a classical heritage is as important as chasing the new. Be fascinated, entertained, moved and changed by what they make.  

“Kahane’s work...is, first and foremost, an exercise in lyric beauty. He sings in a warm, resonant, melancholic baritone, which coasts upward into a plaintive falsetto. He plays the piano with a poetic touch...and his music is suffused with idiosyncratic, enriched tonal harmony...he is one of the finest, most searching songwriters of the day.” 

The New Yorker

"Pekka Kuusisto…surely has the most personal sound of any classical violinist now alive."

Telegraph 

• Program

  Kuusisto/Kahane

  New song cycle (2023)*

  And music by Bach, Nico Muhly, and Scandinavian folk music

  *Co-commissioned by Musica Viva Australia, San Francisco Performances, Chamber Music Northwest, Schuvert Club and The 92Y St New York  

• Artists

  Pekka Kuusisto

  Violin, electric violin, loops, piano, vocals

  Gabriel Kahane

  Piano, electric guitar, keyboards, vocals