Carnegie Hall

The Knights are a collective of adventurous musicians dedicated to transforming the orchestral experience and eliminating barriers between audiences and music. Driven by an open-minded spirit of camaraderie and exploration, they inspire listeners with vibrant programs rooted in the classical tradition and passion for artistic discovery. The Knights started with late-night chamber music reading parties with friends at the home of violinist Colin Jacobsen and cellist Eric Jacobsen. The Jacobsen brothers serve as artistic directors of The Knights, with Eric Jacobsen as conductor.

Proud to be known as “one of Brooklyn’s sterling cultural products ... known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory” (The New Yorker), The Knights have toured extensively across the US and Europe since their founding in 2007. They are celebrated globally, appearing on the world’s most prestigious stages, including those at Tanglewood, the Ravinia Festival, the Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. The orchestra has collaborated with renowned soloists who include Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Béla Fleck, and Gil Shaham.

Artistic collaborators in the 2022–2023 season included Grammy-winning countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo; violinist Ray Chen, who joined the orchestra for an 11-stop European tour; and genre-shattering pianist-composer Aaron Diehl, with whom The Knights released a Grammy-nominated album of Mary Lou Williams’s Zodiac Suite in September 2023.

In 2024, The Knights continue their three-concert series presented by Carnegie Hall that features new works commissioned as part of the orchestra’s Rhapsody project, a multi-year initiative inspired by the 2024 centennial of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The Knights’ third Carnegie Hall concert this season features piano virtuoso Jeffrey Kahane and other esteemed collaborators. For the orchestra’s complete schedule and a list of artistic partners and collaborative projects, please visit theknightsnyc.com.

Violinist and composer Colin Jacobsen is “one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene” (The Washington Post). Since the early 2000s, he has forged an intriguing path in the cultural landscape of our time, collaborating with an astonishingly wide range of artists across diverse traditions and disciplines while constantly looking for new ways to connect with audiences. For his work as a founding member of two innovative and influential ensembles—the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and orchestra The Knights—he was selected from among the nation’s top visual, performing, media, and literary artists to receive a prestigious and substantial United States Artists Fellowship. He is also active as an Avery Fisher Career Grant–winning soloist and has toured with Silkroad since its founding by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 2000 at Tanglewood. As a composer, he has written pieces for an eclectic mix of artists that include pianist Emanuel Ax, singers Anne Sofie von Otter and Jamie Barton, banjo-player Béla Fleck, mandolinist Avi Avital, clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, choreographers John Heginbotham and Brian Brooks, and theater group Compagnia de’ Colombari and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. In the 2022–2023 season, Mr. Jacobsen assumed the position of artistic director at Santa Fe Pro Musica, an organization with which he has had a fruitful long-term association as a guest soloist and leader.

Already well established as one of classical music’s most exciting and innovative conductors, Eric Jacobsen combines fresh interpretations of the traditional canon with cutting-edge collaborations across musical genres. Hailed by The New York Times as “an interpretive dynamo,” Mr. Jacobsen, as both a conductor and a cellist, has built a reputation for engaging audiences with innovative and collaborative programming.

Mr. Jacobsen is also artistic director and co-founder of The Knights, the uniquely adventurous NYC-based chamber orchestra. The ensemble, founded with his brother violinist Colin Jacobsen, grew out of late-night music reading parties with friends, good food and drink, and conversation. Current projects include a multi-year Rhapsody project as well as a residency at Carnegie Hall. Under Mr. Jacobsen’s baton, The Knights have developed an extensive recording collection that includes the critically acclaimed albums Azul with longtime collaborator Yo-Yo Ma, as well as a recent album featuring Gil Shaham in performances of the Beethoven and Brahms violin concertos.

Mr. Jacobsen also currently serves as music director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, as he continues to pioneer both orchestras’ programming and community engagement in new and exciting directions.

A frequent guest conductor, Mr. Jacobsen has established continuing relationships with the Colorado Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Oregon Bach Festival, and Dresden Musikfestspiele. Recent engagements also include concerts with the Omaha Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and Grant Park Music Festival.

Mr. Jacobsen brings joy, storytelling, and a touch of humor to what he describes as “musical conversations” that delight audiences around the world, including those who do not traditionally attend classical music concerts. He is married to Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, and they have a daughter.

Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso, Wu Man is a soloist, educator, and composer who gives her lute-like instrument—which has a history of more than 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. She has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create global awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions. Projects she has initiated have resulted in the pipa finding a place in new solo and quartet works, concertos, opera, chamber, electronic, and jazz music as well as in theater productions, film, dance, and collaborations with visual artists. She has performed in recital and with major orchestras around the world; is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such as the Kronos and Shanghai quartets and The Knights; and is a founding member of Silkroad. She has appeared on nearly 50 recordings, including numerous Grammy Award–winning and –nominated albums. This season, she premieres a new pipa concerto by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Du Yun with The Philadelphia Orchestra and performs with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Ms. Wu studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master’s degree in pipa. At age 13, she was recognized as a child prodigy and a national role model for young pipa players. In 2023, she was honored with both a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, one of the United States’ most prestigious honors in folk and traditional art; and with the Asia Society’s Asia Arts Game Changers Award. She is a visiting professor at her alma mater, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and a distinguished professor at the Zhejiang and Xi’an conservatories. In 2021, she received an honorary doctorate from the New England Conservatory.

Violinist, vocalist, and composer Christina Courtin has been deeply rooted in classical music from an early age. She studied violin at The Juilliard School and is a founding member of The Knights. She has also been a collaborator and side(wo)man to many artists and groups, most recently including Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Chris Thile, Planetarium, Doyle Bramhall II, Lee Ann Womack, Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens, Bebel Gilberto, Citizen Cope, Jesse Harris, Lake Street Dive, Mark Morris, My Brightest Diamond, Don Byron, Marc Ribot, Jon Brion, Marianne Faithfull, Beyoncé, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Baaba Maal, Sara Bareilles, Gordi, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. She is a featured soloist in the films Chappaquiddick and Free State of Jones, has written extensively for commercials and film, and occasionally writes music for This American Life.

Ms. Courtin has developed a style of singing and writing that has given her many welcome opportunities. In 2009, she released her self-titled, first solo album on Nonesuch Records, and most recently, Situation Station was released on In a Circle Records. She has sung with and/or opened for such artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Teddy Thompson, Andrew Bird, Suzanne Vega, Pomplamoose, Robyn Hitchcock, Ray Davies, David Garza, Aoife O’Donovan, Rachael Price, Bernard Fowler, Mike Doughty, Brooklyn Rider, and the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra. She was recently commissioned by the Vail Dance Festival to write a solo violin work for Johnny Gandelsman of Brooklyn Rider. Currently living in Brooklyn, she is finishing a solo record of cover songs she arranged for Baroque ensemble.

Born in Mexico City and currently based in New York City, Magos Herrera is a dazzling jazz singer-songwriter, producer, and educator declared “one of the greatest contemporary interpreters of song” by Latin Jazz Network. With a sultry voice and an unparalleled presence in the contemporary Latin American jazz scene, she is best known for her eloquent vocal improvisation and her singular bold style, which embraces elements of contemporary jazz with Ibero-American melodies and rhythms in a style that elegantly blends and surpasses language boundaries.

An accomplished artist, Ms. Herrera has performed in leading international cultural venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City; the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City; Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid; Union Chapel in London; and Palau de la Música in València. She has performed at some of the most memorable jazz festivals, including the Montreux Jazz Festival and Montreal International Jazz Festival.

Ms. Herrera is a spokesperson for UN Women’s UNITE to End Violence against Women Campaign and HeForShe. On the faculty at The New School, she is a recipient of Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works Award, South Arts’ Jazz Road Creative Residency, and a Café Royal Cultural Foundation grant.