Brooklyn Rider plays Golijov and Schubert

Johnny Gandelsman’s musical voice reflects the artistic collaborations he has been a part of since moving to the United States in 1995. Through his work with such artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Bono, Osvaldo Golijov, David Byrne, Bela Fleck, Kayhan Kalhor, Suzanne Vega, James Levine, Mark Morris, Alim Qasimov and Fargana Qasimova, Nigel Kennedy, and Martin Hayes, Gandelsman has been able to integrate a wide range of creative sensibilities into his own point of view. Combining his Classical training with a desire to reach beyond the boundaries of the concert hall, and a voracious interest in the music of our times, Johnny developed a unique style amongst today’s violinists, one that according to the Boston Globe, possesses “a balletic lightness of touch and a sense of whimsy and imagination”.

A passionate advocate for new music, Johnny has premiered dozens of works written for Brooklyn Rider and Silk Road Ensemble. In 2012-2013, he premiered works by Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin, Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, Vijay Iyer, Bela Fleck, Daniel Cords, Rubin Kodheli, Dana Lyn, Gabriel Kahane, Colin Jacobsen, Shara Worden, John Zorn, Christina Courtin, Ethan Iverson, Padma Newsome, Gregory Saunier, Evan Ziporyn, Bill Frisell, and Nik Bartsch, as well as a violin concerto by Gonzalo Grau, commissioned for Johnny by Community Music Works.

Johnny was born in Moscow into a family of musicians. His father Yuri is a professor of Viola at Michigan State University, his mother Janna is a pianist, and his sister Natasha is a violinist as well. Johnny lives in Brooklyn with his partner Amber and their kids: Julius Ivry and Raiya Leone.

Violinist and composer Colin Jacobsen is “one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene” (Washington Post). An eclectic composer who draws on a range of influences, he was named one of the top 100 composers under 40 by NPR listeners. He is also active as an Avery Fisher Career Grant-winning soloist and a touring member of Yo-Yo Ma’s famed Silk Road Ensemble. For his work as a founding member of two game-changing, audience-expanding ensembles – the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and orchestra The Knights – Jacobsen was recently selected from among the nation’s top visual, performing, media, and literary artists to receive a prestigious and substantial United States Artists Fellowship.

In 2005, the violinist founded Brooklyn Rider with violinist Johnny Gandelsman, violist Nicholas Cords, and his brother, cellist Eric Jacobsen. Hailed as “one of the wonders of contemporary music” (Los Angeles Times), the quartet combines true new-music chops and genre-bending innovation with an equal mastery of the classics. Together its members have presented a wealth of world premieres and toured extensively across North America, Asia, and Europe, in venues ranging from clubs and rock festivals to Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. The group’s artistic partnerships span the musical spectrum from Philip Glass and Osvaldo Golijov to John Zorn, and from singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega to banjo legend Béla Fleck and Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man. Brooklyn Rider’s recordings Passport, Dominant Curve, and Seven Steps all made NPR’s best-of-the-year lists; the group’s Silent City, its collaboration with Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor, was named one of Rhapsody’s Best World Music Albums of the Decade; and with Brooklyn Rider Plays Philip Glass, the four musicians proved themselves “stunning interpreters” (Time Out Chicago) of the composer’s music. In 2006, they founded Minnesota’s Stillwater Music Festival as a place to unveil new repertoire and collaborations, and the quartet enjoys educational residencies at Dartmouth College, UNC Chapel Hill, and the University of Texas-Austin.

It was to foster the intimacy and camaraderie of chamber music on the orchestral stage that Jacobsen and his brother, conductor and cellist Eric Jacobsen, founded The Knights. As the New Yorker reports, “few ensembles are as adept at mixing old music with new as the dynamic young Brooklyn orchestra.” The “consistently inventive, infectiously engaged indie ensemble” (New York Times) has appeared at New York venues ranging from Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the 92nd Street Y to Central Park and (Le) Poisson Rouge, storied concert halls worldwide including Dresden Musikfestspiele, Cologne Philharmonie, Düsseldorf Tonhalle, and National Gallery of Dublin. The orchestra recently added an all-Beethoven album to its Sony Classical discography, their third on the label, with Jacobsen as soloist with Jan Vogler and Antti Siirala in the Triple Concerto. The Knights’ discography also includes Jan Vogler and The Knights Experience: Live from New York, juxtaposing Shostakovich with Jimi Hendrix; New Worlds, a celebration of the Americas that features works by Copland, Ives, Dvorák, Golijov, and Gabriela Lena Frank; and A Second in Silence, pairing Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony with the minimalism of Philip Glass, Erik Satie, and Morton Feldman. We Are The Knights, a documentary film produced by Thirteen/WNET and hosted by Paula Zahn, premiered in September 2011.

Colin 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 writing reveals an eclectic personal voice with a “knack for spinning lines with an elasticity that sounds uncannily like improvisation” (New York Times). Among Jacobsen’s most notable compositions for Brooklyn Rider are “Brooklesca”, an homage to his Brooklyn home; “Beloved, do not let me be discouraged…”, as heard on the quartet’s acclaimed recording with Kayhan Kalhor; and “Achille’s Heel”, which is showcased on Dominant Curve. His most recent compositions for the group 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 by millions of viewers worldwide. His work for dance and theater includes music for Compagnia de’ Colombari’s theatrical production of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”.

As a touring member of Yo-Yo Ma’s venerated Silk Road Project since its founding in 2000, Jacobsen has participated in residencies and performances at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hollywood Bowl, and across the U.S., as well as in Azerbaijan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, and Switzerland. Highlights of his journeys with the ensemble include performances in front of the world’s largest wooden Buddha statue in Nara, Japan; as part of Lincoln Center’s 50th anniversary celebrations; at the opening of the Shanghai Special Olympics; and at the Red Fort in Agra, India. He appears on all six of the Silk Road Ensemble’s albums.

As a violin soloist, Jacobsen was “born to the instrument and its sweet, lyrical possibilities” (New York Times). He has collaborated with orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony, and has premiered concertos by Kevin Beavers and Lisa Bielawa. He has performed with such prominent artists as Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, Yo-Yo Ma, Christian Tetzlaff, Mitsuko Uchida, and composer Tan Dun, with whom he toured China. With Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters as narrator, Jacobsen recently performed Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat. He has regularly appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, at Bargemusic, and as a member of the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, besides enjoying cross-disciplinary explorations with dance and theater companies including the New York City Ballet, Mark Morris Dance Group, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. His numerous summer festival engagements include Caramoor, Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, Moritzburg, Ravinia, Salzburg, Tanglewood, and Taiwan’s National Concert Hall.

A graduate of the Juilliard School and the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, Jacobsen’s principal teachers have included Doris Rothenberg, Louise Behrend, Robert Mann and Vera Beths. He received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2003.

Colin Jacobsen plays a Joseph Guarneri filius Andreae violin dating from 1696 and a Samuel Zygmuntowicz violin made in 2008.

Violist Nicholas Cords is strongly committed to the advocacy and performance of music from a very broad historic and geographical spectrum. His busy touring schedule has led him in recent years to Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Cologne Philharmonie, and the Library of Congress. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the New York String Seminar Orchestra. He recently appeared at the 2012 White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg where he performed recent contemporary American chamber and solo works, including Morton Feldman’s The Viola In My Life 3. At the 2012 Vail International Dance Festival, he gave two performances of Stravinsky’s Elegie for solo viola with the Brazilian ballerina Carla Korbes in a late Balanchine choreography that hasn’t been seen for thirty years. He has appeared in recent years at the Schleswig-Holstein, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Spoleto, Moritzburg, Lincoln Center, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Smithsonian Folklife, and Bard Festivals.

Mr. Cords is a regular member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, a musical collective that uses the historic Silk Road trading route as a metaphor for musical exchange and creativity in the present. The group has not only traveled to many of the major musical centers of the United States and Europe, but also to China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Egypt, Iran, Syria and a number of the Central Asian Republics. In addition to performing with the ensemble, he has taken a role in the organization and development of new creative projects, programming for concerts and museum residencies, and as an active part of two long-term residencies with the group; one at the Rhode Island School of Design and one at Harvard University. Mr. Cords appears on all four of the ensemble’s albums; Silk Road Journeys, Beyond the Horizon, New Impossibilites and Off the Map.

He has appeared frequently on television and radio including a Chinese National Television broadcast from the Great Wall, the David Letterman Show, numerous National Public Radio broadcasts, Good Morning America, NHK Japan, and a four year run as resident commentator and performer on WQXR New York’s Radio weekly On A-I-R. Mr. Cords is an active member of many ensembles, including the Caramoor Virtuousi, An Die Musik, The Knights, and the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert.

Mr. Cords is also a founding member of Brooklyn Rider; a genre-defying string quartet dedicated to creative programming of repertoire both new and old (www.brooklynrider.com). The group has collaborated with composers all over the globe, as well as with Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, Persian kemancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor, Japanese shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki, banjo phenomenon Bela Fleck, and songstress Suzanne Vega, to name a few. Equally at home in concert halls and clubs, Brooklyn Rider was the only classical group invited to play in the 2010 South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. Last season’s highlights included Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall debuts. This season sees the group touring in North America and Asia, along with premieres of works by John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Vijay Iyer, Padma Newsome, Greg Saunier, and more. Their recordings, Silent City, Passport, and Dominant Curve, Brooklyn Rider Plays Philip Glass, and Seven Steps have received wide critical acclaim from sources ranging from Gramophone Magazine to Pitchfork.

Mr. Cords began his musical education at the Juilliard School where he won top honors in the viola competition and subsequently gave the New York premiere of John Harbison’s Viola Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall. He completed his studies at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. His teachers have included Karen Tuttle, Harvey Shapiro, Joseph Fuchs, and Felix Galamir. A committed teacher, Mr. Cords currently teaches at Stony Brook University. He spends part of his summer schedule teaching at the Bennington Chamber Music and Composers Conference and served for eight years as viola instructor at Princeton University. He has twice participated as a mentor along with other members of the Silk Road Ensemble in the Weill Institute Professional Training Workshops at Carnegie Hall and has also delivered a series of teacher workshops for the New York City Department of Education on music and the role of it can play in cross-cultural understanding. He recently presented a talk at the American Association of Museums National Conference on the role of music in a museum setting. He is a regular contributor to NPR’s classical music blog Deceptive Cadence. Mr. Cords plays on an instrument made for him in 2008 by famed Brooklyn maker Samuel Zygmuntowicz.

A “long-admired figure on the New York scene” (New Yorker), cellist Michael Nicolas enjoys a diverse career as chamber musician, soloist, recording artist, and improvisor. His eclectic tastes and adventurous spirit have led him to forge a musical path of uncommon breadth, where his activities range from performing the masterpieces of the past in the world’s most prestigious concert halls, to free improvisation in a downtown New York experimental venue with giants of the genre, to working with contemporary composers of all styles, pushing the boundaries of musical expression and meaning.

The ensembles Michael plays in illustrate his commitment to diversity. He is the cellist of the intrepid and genre-defying string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which has drawn praise from classical, world music, and rock critics alike. As a member of the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), he has worked with countless composers from around the world, premiering and recording dozens of new works. Another group, Third Sound, which Michael helped found, made its debut with an historic residency at the 2015 Havana Contemporary Music Festival, in Cuba.

As a soloist, Michael performs recitals and concertos across the globe. His album Transitions, available on the Sono Luminus label, was named Q2 Music Album of the Week at WQXR upon release, and it has since garnered critical acclaim across North America. His chamber music playing can also be found on the Naxos, Tzadik, and Universal Korea labels.

Of mixed French-Canadian and Taiwanese heritage, Michael was born in Canada, and currently resides in New York City. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School.