Brooklyn Rider

String Quartet

Johnny Gandelsman
Violin
Colin Jacobsen
Violin
Nicholas Cords
Viola
Michael Nicolas
Cello
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Contact Linda Uschinski

Biography

The name Brooklyn Rider is inspired by the artist group The Blue Rider, which published an eclectic almanac of artwork, essays and music that served as an artistic testament to their time while offering a vision for the future and an open embrace of diverse artistic traditions, media, and aesthetics.
Hailed as “the future of chamber music” (Strings), the String Quartet Brooklyn Rider presents eclectic repertoire and gripping performances that continue to draw rave reviews from Classical, World, and Rock critics alike. NPR credits Brooklyn Rider with “recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble,” which is reflected in the quartet’s programs:

With The 4 Elements, Brooklyn Rider brings a theme to concert stages since the past season that could not be more timely: global warming and the destruction of our planet, which also serves as a wake-up call.

With an almost prophetic sense for the zeitgeist, Brooklyn Rider presented the project Healing Modes in 2020, which takes a holistic view on Beethoven's Op. 132 combined with five commissioned works by Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, Matana Roberts and the two Pulitzer Prize winners Caroline Shaw and Du Yun. They explore the theme of healing from a variety of historical and cultural perspectives. In March 2020, the New Yorker praised the concept of the recording as convincing and the playing of the four as persuasive.
In 2019, two albums were released featuring instrumentalists who are at the forefront of their respective genre: jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman (Sun On Sand) and Irish fiddle master Martin Hayes (The Butterfly).

In the fall of 2018, Brooklyn Rider released Dreamers on Sony Music Masterworks with celebrated Mexican jazz vocalist Magos Herrera. The recording includes gems of the Ibero-American songbook as well as pieces written to texts by Octavio Paz, Rubén Darío, and Federico García Lorca — all reimagined by arrangers including Jaques Morelenbaum, Gonzalo Grau, Diego Schissi, Guillermo Klein, and Brooklyn Rider’s own Colin Jacobsen.
„The quartet presented a programme illustrative of the diversity of expressive gestures arising from the artistry of the physical ensemble, and from the vitality of the structural forms created by composers.”bachtrack (July 2023)
In 2017/ 2018, Brooklyn Rider released Spontaneous Symbols. The album features new quartet music by Tyondai Braxton, Evan Ziporyn, Paula Matthusen, Kyle Sanna, and Brooklyn Rider violinist Colin Jacobsen. Works from that recording were also featured in the live performance of Some of a Thousand Words, the ensemble’s recent collaboration with choreographer Brian Brooks and former New York City Ballet prima ballerina Wendy Whelan. An intimate series of duets and solos in which the quartet’s live onstage music is a dynamic and central creative component, Some of a Thousand Words was featured at the 2016 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, before two U.S. tours, including a week-long run at New York City’s Joyce Theater.

In 2016, Brooklyn Rider released an album entitled so many things on Naïve Records with Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, comprising music by Colin Jacobsen, Caroline Shaw, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Björk, Sting, Kate Bush and Elvis Costello, among others. The group toured material from the album and more with von Otter in the U.S. and Europe, including stops at Carnegie Hall and the Opernhaus Zürich.

Additionally, Brooklyn Rider performed Philip Glass’s String Quartet #7, furthering a relationship with the iconic American composer, which began with 2011’s much-praised Brooklyn Rider Plays Philip Glass and will continue with the upcoming album release of Glass’s recent quartets on the composer’s Orange Mountain Music label.

In 2015, the group celebrated its tenth anniversary with the groundbreaking multi-disciplinary project Brooklyn Rider Almanac, for which it recorded and toured 15 specially commissioned works, each inspired by a different artistic muse. The second edition of the project with four new works by Clarice Assad, Gabriel Kahane, Giovanni Sollima and Tyshawn Sorey was performed in the 23/24 season at the Kölner Philharmonie and several other venues.

Brooklyn Rider toured Australia in February 2024 with concerts at the Melbourne Recital Center, the Perth Festival, Ukaria in Adelaide and the Sydney Opera House. The Sydney Morning Herald subsequently ran the headline "This may be the coolest String Quartet in the world".

In the 2024/25 season, the quartet will perform in Europe at venues including the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, the Konserthuset Stockholm and the Teatro Auditorium Manzoni in Bologna.


2024/2025
This biography is to be reproduced without any changes, omissions or additions, unless expressly authorized by artist management.
Contact: Linda Uschinski

Images

Programme

2026 / 2027

You’ll find the current programs in the IMPRESARIUM of the 26/27 season

2025 / 2026

Schedule

02/07/2025
19:00 h
Bergkirche Osnabrück
Osnabrück, Germany
Brooklyn Rider
24/09/2025
20:00 h
Brooklyn Rider
26/09/2025
20:00 h
De Singel, concert hall
Antwerpen, Belgium
Brooklyn Rider
27/09/2025
16:00 h
Pantheon Theater
Bonn, Germany
Brooklyn Rider
28/09/2025
17:00 h
Casals Forum, Carl Bechstein Saal
Kronberg im Taunus, Germany
Brooklyn Rider
31/10/2025
19:30 h
UKARIA
Adelaide, Australia
Brooklyn Rider
01/11/2025
16:00 h
UKARIA
Adelaide, Australia
Brooklyn Rider, Ariadne Greif
01/11/2025
20:00 h
UKARIA
Adelaide, Australia
Brooklyn Rider
02/11/2025
11:30 h
UKARIA
Adelaide, Australia
Brooklyn Rider, Melissa Toogood, Fiona Jopp, Ariadne Greif
02/11/2025
14:30 h
UKARIA
Adelaide, Australia
Brooklyn Rider, Ariadne Greif, ANAM String Quartet
05/11/2025
19:30 h
Melbourne Recital Centre, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
Melbourne, Southbank VIC 3006, Australia
Brooklyn Rider
16/01/2026
18:30 h
Brooklyn Rider

Discography

Starlighter
Kinan Azmeh & Brooklyn Rider (with Mathias Kunzli) - In The Element
I. Run

In The Element
II. Rain

Kinan Azmeh & Brooklyn Rider (with Mathias Kunzli) - In the Element
III. Grounded

Starlighter


Brooklyn Rider
Dabke On Martense Street

Kinan Azmeh & Brooklyn Rider (with Mathias Kunzli)
Everywhere Is Falling Everywhere

The Wanderer
Gonzalo Grau
Aroma a Distancia

Osvaldo Golijov
Um Dia Bom

Franz Schubert
String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D810

The Butterfly

Maghera Mountain
O'Neill's March
Jenny's Welcome Home to Charlie
The Butterfly
Bob and Bernie
Ship in Full Sail
Drunken Sailor
Mulqueen's
Port Na bPúcaí
An Rogaire Dubh
P.Joe's Reel
Hole in the Hedge

Dreamers

Niña
Balderrama
Dreams
De Manhã
Volver a los 17
Milonga Gris
La Aurora de Nueva York
Eu Vim Da Bahía
Coração Vagabundo
Tú y Yo
La Llorona
Luz de Luna
Undiú

Magos Herrera - Voice

Philip Glass: String Quartets Nos. 6 and 7
Philip Glass
Saxophone Quartet (1995) - Arranged By Brooklyn Rider
String Quartet No. 6 (2013)
String Quartet No. 7 (2014)

So Many Things

Kate Bush: Pi
John Adams: Am I In Your Light?
Caroline Shaw: Cant Voi l'Aube
Colin Jacobsen: For Sixty Cents
Björk: Cover Me
Nicol Muhly: So Many Things
Anders Hillborg: Kväll
Björk: Hunter
Brad Mehldau: Love Sublime
Elvis Costello: Speak Darkly, My Angel
Gordon Sumner, Robert Mathes: Practical Arrangement
Rufus Wainwright: Les Feux d'Artifice t'Appellent

Anne Sofie von Otter - Mezzo-soprano

The Fiction Issue

Gabriel Kahane, Matthew Zapruder:
The Fiction Issue
Bradbury Studies
Come On All You Ghosts

Magdeburg Music, 2016

The Brooklyn Rider Almanac

Necessary Henry
Maintenance Music
Simpson's Gap
The Haring Escape
Show Me
Dig The Say
Quartet, Parts One & Two
Morris Dance
Exit
Five-Legged Cat
Tralala
Ping Pong Fumble Thaw
John Steinbeck

A Walking Fire
Ljova
Culai
The Game
The Muse
The Song (For Romica Puceanu)
Love Potion, Expired

Béla Bartók
String Quartet No. 2, Sz. 67
Moderato
Allegro Molto Capriccioso
Lento

Colin Jacobsen
Three Miniatures For String Quartet
Majnum's Moonshine
The Flowers Of Esfahan
A Walking Fire

Seven Steps
Brooklyn Rider
Seven Steps
Together Into This Unknowable Night

Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartet No. 14 In C-sharp minor, Op. 131
I. Adagio Ma Non Troppo E Molto Espressivo
II. Allegro Molto Vivace
III. Allegro Moderato
IV. Andante Ma Non Troppo E Molto Cantabile - Andante Moderato E Lusinghiero - Adagio - Allegretto - Adagio Ma Non Troppo E Semplice
V. Presto
VI. Adagio Quasi Un Poco Andante
VII. Allegro

Brooklyn Rider Plays Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Suite from "Bent" for String Quartet
String Quartet No. 3 (Mishima)
(1957: Award Montage; November 25 - Ichigaya; Grandmother And Kimitake; 1962: Body Building; Blood Oath; Mishima / Closing)
String Quartet No. 1
String Quartet No. 4 (Buczak)
String Quartet No. 2 (Company)
String Quartet No. 5

Dominant Curve
Colin Jacobsen
Achille's Heel (2009)
Lydia's Reflection
Second Bounce
Loveland
Shur Landing

Shakuhachi – Kojiro Umezaki
(Cycles) What Falls Must Rise (2009)

Claude Debussy
String Quartet In G minor, Op. 10
I. Animé Et Très Décidé
II. Assez Vif Bien Rytmé
III. Andantino Doucement Expressif
IV. Très Modéré - Très Mouvementé Et Avec Passion

Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky
....Al Niente (2009)

John Cage
In A Landscape (1948)

Silent City

Ascending Bird
Silent City
Parvaz
Beloved, Do Not Let Me Be Discouraged

Passport

Vagharshabadi Dance
Harvest Song
It's Cloudy
Festive Song
The Partridge
Brooklesca
La Muerte Chiquita
Plume
Crosstown

Videos

Brooklyn Rider - Philip Glass Quartet Satz
Brooklyn Rider - Live at Fraser

Contact

Linda Uschinski
Head of String Quartet Department
t: +49 (0)30 414 781 717