Carnegie Hall

With its gripping performance style and unquenchable appetite for musical adventure, Brooklyn Rider has carved a singular space in the world of string quartets over its 15-year history. Defining the string quartet as a medium with deep historic roots and endless possibility for invention, the ensemble finds equal inspiration in musical languages ranging from late Beethoven to Persian classical music to American roots music to the endlessly varied voices of living composers. Claiming no allegiance to either end of the historical spectrum, Brooklyn Rider most comfortably operates within the long arc of the tradition, seeking to illuminate works of the past with fresh insight while coaxing the genre into the future through an inclusive programming vision, deep-rooted collaborations with a wide range of global tradition bearers, and the creation of thoughtful and relevant frames for commissioning projects.

The 2021–2022 concert season was strongly illustrative of the intrepid musical appetite of the members of the Brooklyn Rider. That fall, they premiered a major new work, Um Dia Bom, by the great Argentinian composer and close friend of the quartet, Osvaldo Golijov (an upcoming release, The Wanderer, couples this work with Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet). They also launched two new collaborative projects: one with Israeli mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital and the other a brand-new phase of work with Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter that explores themes of love and death through the music of Schubert and Rufus Wainwright. This season, they work with Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, continue their collaboration with Mexican jazz vocalist Magos Herrera (with whom they recorded Dreamers on Sony Classical), and launch a major new commissioning venture called The Four Elements, an exploration of the four classical elements (earth, water, air, and fire) as metaphor for both the complex inner world of the string quartet and the health of planet Earth.

Brooklyn Rider has remained steadfast in its commitment to generate new music for string quartet at nearly every phase of its history. Shared during the global pandemic at the height of the US lockdown, the Grammy-nominated recording Healing Modes (In A Circle Records) presented Beethoven’s towering Op. 132—the composer’s late testament on healing and the restorative power of new creation—interwoven with five new commissions that powerfully explore topics as wide-ranging as the US-Mexico border conflict, the Syrian refugee crisis, the mental health epidemic, and physical well-being. Described by The New Yorker as a project that “could not possibly be more relevant or necessary than it is currently,” the recording included commissions by Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, Matana Roberts, Caroline Shaw, and Du Yun.