TICKETS $30

Doors 6:30 p.m.; Event 7 p.m.
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THE EXPERIENCE

Join us for an evening of music and conversation celebrating Elliott Smith’s musical legacy! Acclaimed musicians Laura Veirs, Shannon Lay, and Gabriel Kahane will play covers of songs they love and songs of their own influenced by Elliott’s. The benefit will also include a group discussion between the artists exploring the ways Elliott’s songwriting has shaped them as musicians, moderated by Jamie Fisher, author of the new biography Nobody Broke Your Heart. In addition we will screen previously unseen footage of Elliott performances, shot by filmmaker Lance Bangs in the nineties at the Knitting Factory in Manhattan and the Reading Festival in the UK. 

This event is part of a series of concerts supporting causes that Elliott cared about, set in the cities he called home. All proceeds go to the SIMS Foundation, which connects musicians with mental-health resources, and Outside In, which supports young people experiencing homelessness. The benefit is independently produced and not sponsored by his estate.

ON STAGE: 

Jamie Fisher (Author and Moderator) – Jamie Fisher is a freelance writer and staff researcher for The New York Times Magazine. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The L.A. Review of Books. Nobody Broke Your Heart is her first book.

Shannon Lay (Musician) – Shannon Lay’s music is shored by radical empathy. After 15 years of writing, recording and performing her singularly gentle songs in venues around the world, the self-taught singer-songwriter is most concerned with how her music may help people in emotional and spiritual need. In a world of persistent change, Lay’s goal is to have concentrations of love and energy in her work that double as a helping hand or a voice whispering “everything is going to be ok.” The singer’s abiding belief is that immense change also means invaluable transformation and permanent relief. Intention is her North Star. Hailed by publications such as Pitchfork, The Guardian, SPIN and Uncut magazine, Lay’s solo albums, including “Geist,” “August”, “Living Water,” and “All this life goin’ down” are noted for their thoughtful and entirely tender reflections on life’s big questions. Her seraphic voice has drawn comparisons to British folk icons Anne Briggs, Sandy Denny and Vashti Bunyan. Though an old soul, Lay aims to meet her listeners in the present. For her, creating a song, a recording or a live performance that is relatable and communal is of the utmost importance for we are constantly in flux and those unknowns, met with compassion, can be beautiful.

Laura Veirs is a singer-songwriter and longtime fan of Elizabeth Cotten. Her album Year of Meteors was selected by the New York Times as a  “critics’ choice.” Her award-winning album of music for children, Tumble Bee features guest musicians including Colin Meloy, Jim James, and Bela Fleck. case/lang/veirs, her collaborative project with k.d. lang and Neko Case, earned widespread praise.

Laura Veirs returns with Temple Songs, her first album in four years—and the first she has written, recorded, arranged, produced, and performed entirely on her own. “I didn’t know if I would write songs again,” says Veirs, who spent the intervening years building a backyard studio, getting married, blending a family with four teenagers, deepening her visual art practice (painting), and expanding her music teaching. “Turns out that period was a gathering phase. When I made the commitment to recording the album myself, the muse caught me again and it came together very quickly.”

Veirs played guitars, bass, drums, tambourine, percussion, and sings vocals; the only outside contribution is saxophone by a secret special guest. She used no click tracks and no electronic instruments, working by feel and intuition while watching bamboo sway outside her studio window. At 52, three decades into her career, Veirs reconnects with herself through a radically new process—one that feels both fresh and profoundly earned. Longtime fans will recognize the core of Laura Veirs here—unfiltered and renewed—and new listeners will discover an artist fully inhabiting her creative powers. 

Gabriel Kahane (Musician) – Over the last fifteen years, Gabriel Kahane has established a diverse career that has brought him from rock clubs and concert halls to off-Broadway theaters and beyond, where he is known for tackling politically thorny subject matter with grace and complexity. His wide-ranging discography includes five albums as a singer-songwriter, several orchestral projects, a disc of chamber music, as well as various other collaborative albums. He has worked with an array of artists spanning the aesthetic gamut, from Phoebe Bridgers, Paul Simon, Sylvan Esso, Andrew Bird, and Sufjan Stevens, to the Danish String Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, Attacca Quartet, Caroline Shaw, and Pekka Kuusisto, with whom he plays as the duo Council. As a composer of concert music, Kahane is noted for dissolving the boundaries between vernacular and formal idioms, often mining his language as a songwriter in chamber and orchestral works. His music has been performed by dozens of orchestras throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and the United Kingdom. emergency shelter intake form, an oratorio addressing economic inequality through the lens of the homelessness crisis, was commissioned, premiered, and recorded by the Oregon Symphony, and has since been heard in London, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Other notable concert works include If love will not swing wide the gates, a clarinet concerto written for New York Philharmonic principal Anthony McGill; Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States, written for Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; and  Heirloom, a widely performed piano concerto composed for his father, the noted pianist and conductor, Jeffrey Kahane; that work was released in 2025 by Nonesuch Records, marking Gabriel’s third album for the noted label. More recently, Kahane has begun a career as a conductor, leading ensembles including the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, and the Oregon Symphony. An avid theater artist, Kahane made his off-Broadway debut as a performer at Playwrights Horizons with the 2024 repertory run of two solo pieces, Magnificent Bird and Book of Travelers. His album & stage spectacle, The Ambassador, a sprawling meditation on the mythos of Los Angeles, was produced at the BAM Next Wave Festival in 2014, under the direction of Tony-winner John Tiffany. A musical, February House, written with the playwright Seth Bockley, received its New York premiere at the Public Theater in 2012. In 2018, Kahane made his Broadway debut with the score for Kenneth Lonergan’s play The Waverly Gallery, starring Elaine May, Lucas Hedges, and Michael Cera. Increasingly productive as a writer, Kahane’s prose has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Via the newsletter “Words and Music,” Kahane publishes bi-weekly essays on a variety of topics, all of which can be accessed at  gabrielkahane.substack.com. The recipient of a 2021 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Kahane relocated in the spring of 2020 to Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his family.