The Knights

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The Knights

The Knights

The Grammy-nominated Knights are an orchestral collective, flexible in size and repertory, dedicated to transforming the concert experience. Engaging listeners and defying boundaries with programs that showcase the players’ roots in the classical tradition and passion for artistic discovery, The Knights have “become one of Brooklyn’s sterling cultural products… known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory” (New Yorker).

The Knights have had an exciting 2017-18 season, a highlight of which was a U.S. tour with genre-defying Israeli mandolinist Avi Avital and Syrian clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh. Tour repertoire came from around the world, with arrangements and transcriptions by the artists themselves, and features the world premiere of Azmeh’s Triple Concerto for Clarinet, Mandolin, Violin, and Orchestra. Thanks in part to the generous support of the Mellon Foundation, The Knights’ will complete their second Home Season in Brooklyn, in partnership with the downtown venue BRIC, presenting family concerts, evening performances, and a characteristically wide-ranging roster of guest artists. Programs include a collaboration with Puerto-Rican composer Angelica Negrón on her drag opera, a night of German lieder with Katja Herbers, as well as an exploration of the pervasive influence of Eastern European folk music. The Knights’ 2017 summer season encompassed a world premiere by composer Judd Greenstein and an East Coast premiere by Vijay Iyer; their tenth consecutive appearance in Central Park’s Naumburg Orchestral Concerts series; their fourth year at Tanglewood, a performance at the Ravinia Festival with mezzo-soprano Susan Graham; and a collaboration with choreographer John Heginbotham at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

The 2016-17 season saw the release of the celestial-themed album Azul on Warner Classics with longtime collaborator Yo-Yo Ma; an EP release with Gabriel Kahane of his song cycle Crane Palimpsest; a debut at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center as part of the inaugural “SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras;” and the New York premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s song cycle Unremembered, which The Knights also performed at Tennessee’s Big Ears Music Festival. They rounded out the season with a European tour, which took them to the Easter Festival at Aix-en-Provence for six performances with celebrated guest artists pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Bertrand Chamayou, and violinist Renaud Capuçon; along with three concerts across Germany, including one at the new Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg where the ensemble’s performance was lauded as one of the best in the new hall (Hamburg Abendetter).

Counted among the highlights from recent seasons are: a performance with Yo-Yo Ma at Caramoor; the recording of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto on master violinist Gil Shaham’s Grammy-nominated 2016 release, 1930’s Violin Concertos, Vol. 2, as well as a North American tour with Shaham; residencies at Dartmouth, Penn State and Washington DC’s Dumbarton Oaks; and a performance in the NY PHIL BIENNIAL along with the San Francisco Girls Chorus (led by composer Lisa Bielawa) and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, which featured world premieres by Rome Prize-winner Bielawa, Pulitzer Prize-winner Aaron Jay Kernis, and Knights violinist and co-founder Colin Jacobsen. The ensemble made its Carnegie Hall debut in the New York premiere of the Steven Stucky/Jeremy Denk opera The Classical Style, and has toured the U.S. with banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck, and Europe with soprano Dawn Upshaw. In recent years The Knights have also collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Joshua Redman, Silk Road virtuoso Siamak Aghaei, and pipa virtuoso Wu Man. Recordings include 2015’s “instinctive and appealing” (The Times, UK) the ground beneath our feet on Warner Classics, featuring the ensemble’s first original group composition; an all-Beethoven disc on Sony Classical (their third project with the label); and 2012’s “smartly programmed” (NPR) A Second of Silence for Ancalagon.

The Knights evolved from late-night chamber music reading parties with friends at the home of violinist Colin Jacobsen and cellist Eric Jacobsen. The Jacobsen brothers, who are also founding members of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, serve as artistic directors of The Knights, with Eric Jacobsen as conductor. In December 2012, the Jacobsens were selected from among the nation’s top visual, performing, media, and literary artists to receive a prestigious United States Artists Fellowship.

The Knights’ roster boasts remarkably diverse talents, including composers, arrangers, singer-songwriters, and improvisers, who bring a range of cultural influences to the group, from jazz and klezmer to pop and indie rock music. The unique camaraderie within the group retains the intimacy and spontaneity of chamber music in performance.

Colin Jacobsen, Artistic Director

As the Washington Post observes, violinist and composer Colin Jacobsen is “one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene.” A founding member of two game-changing, audience-expanding ensembles – the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and orchestra The Knights – he is also a touring member of Yo-Yo Ma’s venerated Silk Road Project and an Avery Fisher Career Grant-winning violinist. Jacobsen’s work as a composer developed as a natural outgrowth of his chamber and orchestral collaborations. Jointly inspired by encounters with leading exponents of non-western traditions and by his own classical heritage, his most recent compositions for Brooklyn Rider include Three Miniatures – “vivacious, deftly drawn sketches” (New York Times) – which were written for the reopening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Islamic art galleries. Jacobsen collaborated with Iran’s Siamak Aghaei to write a Persian folk-inflected composition, Ascending Bird, which he performed as soloist with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House, in a concert that was streamed live and seen by millions of viewers worldwide. His work for dance and theater includes Chalk and Soot, a collaboration with Dance Heginbotham, and music for Compagnia de’ Colombari’s theatrical production of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself.

Eric Jacobsen, Artistic Director

Hailed by the New York Times as “an interpretive dynamo,” conductor and cellist Eric Jacobsen has built a reputation for engaging audiences with innovative and collaborative projects. Jacobsen is the founder and Artistic Director of The Knights and a former member of the genre-defying string quartet Brooklyn Rider.  As conductor of The Knights, Jacobsen has led the “consistently inventive, infectiously engaged indie ensemble” (New York Times) at New York venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to Central Park, and at renowned international halls such as the Vienna Musikverein, Cologne Philharmonie and the Elbphilharmonie.  In 2017-18, Jacobsen is set to embark on his third season as Music Director of the Orlando Philharmonic. Also in demand as a guest conductor, Jacobsen has recently led the Camerata Bern, the Detroit Symphony, the Alabama Symphony, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Deutsche Philharmonie Merck, and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble.

Colin & Eric Jacobsen, Artistic Directors,

Eric Jacobsen, conductor

Anna Clyne, (1980), Within Her Arms, (2008-09)

Komitas, (1869-1935) Armenian Folk Songs arranged as a Suite to include :

Vagharshabadi Dance

It’s Cloudy

Follow Along!

Song of the Little Partridge

Spring TimeFestive Song

 Intermission

Leoš Janáček, (1854-1928), Idyll, (1878)

Johannes Brahms, (1883-1897), Hungarian Dances (1869)

No. 17, Andantino

No. 11, Poco Andante

No. 19, Allegretto

No. 5, Allegro