Brooklyn Rider

The current concert season is strongly illustrative of the intrepid musical appetite of Brooklyn Rider. This fall, they began unveiling a major new commissioning and programmatic venture called The Four Elements; an exploration of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) as both metaphor for both the complex inner world of the string quartet and the current health of planet Earth. This winter, the quartet will also release The Wanderer, their first ever live concert recording, made in Palieusius Manor in Eastern Lithuania while on tour last spring. The album consists of two works written recent works written for Brooklyn Rider by Gonzalo Grau and Osvlado Golijov, as well as Schubert’s iconic “Death and the Maiden” String Quartet. This season also sees the quartet reuniting with Magos Herrera across the US for their Dreamers project.

The 2021-22 season boasted two unique collaborative ventures: one with Israeli mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital, and the other, a brand new phase of work with Swedish mezzo soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, where they explored themes of love and death through the music of Franz Schubert and Rufus Wainwright. Also, 2022’s release of The Stranger (Avie Records) with tenor Nicholas Phan was recently nominated for a 2023 Grammy® Award and made numerous “best of” lists for 2022, including The New Yorker.

Brooklyn Rider has remained steadfast in their commitment to generate new music and collaborative ventures at nearly every phase of their history. Shared during the global pandemic at the height of the US lockdown, the Grammy®-nominated recording Healing Modes (In A Circle Records) was described by The New Yorker as a project which “…could not possibly be more relevant or necessary than it is currently.” That same season also saw the release of two projects from vastly different musical spheres— The Butterfly with the master Irish fiddler Martin Hayes (In A Circle Records) and the other, Sun On Sand (Nonesuch Records), featuring the saxophone great Joshua Redman. In fall 2018, Brooklyn Rider released Dreamers on Sony Music Masterworks with Mexican jazz vocalist Magos Herrera. These projects, along with the rest of Brooklyn Rider’s extensive discography, have helped give rise to NPR Music’s observation that Brooklyn Rider is “recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.”