JUNE 23, 2015 @ 7:30 PM
The Knights
Eric Jacobsen, conductor
Ariana Kim and Tessa Lark, violins
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
*Tessa Lark, violin – is the 2012 winner of the Walter W. Naumburg International Competition.
Support for The Knights’ performance has been provided by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
THE KNIGHTS
The 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 musical discovery, The Knights have, as the New Yorker observes, “become one of Brooklyn’s sterling cultural products…known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory.”
The Knights’ 2014-15 season kicks off with a performance at Brooklyn’s Roulette, marking the first of a series of New York City residencies to be undertaken by the group over the next three seasons with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Other highlights include the Caramoor Fall Festival, where The Knights serve as curators and give three performances featuring saxophonist Joshua Redman and violinist Gil Shaham; the ensemble’s debut at Carnegie Hall in the New York premiere of the Steven Stucky/Jeremy Denk opera The Classical Style; a collaboration with The National’s Bryce Dessner, broadcast on WNYC’s New Sounds Live; and a residency at the University of Georgia. In the new year, The Knights tour the East Coast with banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck before embarking on a European tour with soprano Dawn Upshaw, featuring performances in Salzburg, Baden-Baden, Darmstadt, and at Vienna’s legendary Musikverein.
Recent season highlights include The Knights’ debut at the Tanglewood and Ojai Music Festivals, and collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Dawn Upshaw, Jeremy Denk, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the Joshua Redman Quartet, santur player Siamak Aghaei, and pipa virtuoso Wu Man, and the creation of the ensemble’s first original group composition. Recordings include the ground beneath our feet, a live album released in January 2015 on Warner Classics featuring Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks and original works by members of the ensemble, an all-Beethoven disk released in 2013 on Sony Classical (the orchestra’s third project with the label), and 2012’s “smartly programmed” (NPR) A Second of Silence on Ancalagon Records.
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.
Learn more at theknightsnyc.com.
ERIC JACOBSEN
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. As co-founder and Artistic Director of the adventurous orchestra The Knights and a founding member of the genre-defying string quartet Brooklyn Rider, Jacobsen, along with his brother, violinist Colin Jacobsen, was awarded a prestigious United States Artists Fellowship in 2012.
Jacobsen founded The Knights with his brother, Colin, to foster the intimacy and camaraderie of chamber music on the orchestral stage; as the New Yorker reports, “few ensembles are as adept at mixing old music with new as the dynamic young Brooklyn orchestra.” As Music Director, Jacobsen has led the “consistently inventive, infectiously engaged indie ensemble” (New York Times) at New York venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to the Ojai Music Festival, and international hot spots such as the Dresden Musikfestspiele and Cologne Philharmonie. Recent collaborators include cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Jan Vogler, violinists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham, and soprano Dawn Upshaw.
Under Jacobsen’s baton, The Knights have an extensive recording collection that includes January’s release of the ground beneath our feet, the ensemble’s first for Warner Classics. The Knights previously issued three albums for Sony Classical- Jan Vogler and The Knights Experience: Live from New York, New Worlds, and all-Beethoven album partnering the Triple Concerto and Fifth Symphony- and the “smartly programmed” (NPR) A Second in Silence on the Ancalagon label. We Are The Knights, a documentary film produced by Thirteen/WNET, premiered in September 2011.
Also in demand as a guest conductor, Jacobsen has recently led the Camerata Bern, the symphonies Detroit and Alabama and ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. In the 2014-15 season Jacobsen celebrates his first season as Music Director of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony and Artistic Partner with the Northwest Sinfonietta. He also looks forward to guest conducting the Orlando Philharmonic, Deutsche Philharmonie Merck, and Silk Road Ensemble, besides touring with The Knights in the U.S. and Europe. A dedicated chamber musician, Jacobsen is a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s venerated Silk Road Project and as a founding member of Brooklyn Rider, he has taken part in a wealth of world premieres and toured extensively in North America and Europe.
ARIANA KIM
Noted by the New York Times for giving “the proceedings an invaluable central thread of integrity and stylishness,” violinist Ariana Kim made her New York recital debut at Carnegie’s Weill Hall in 2008 and is a newly appointed professor at Cornell University. At sixteen, Ariana made her debut with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and at twenty-four was appointed acting concertmaster of the Louisiana Philharmonic in New Orleans. She went on to receive her doctorate from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Robert Mann and was shortly thereafter appointed as a professor at the University of Indianapolis. Ariana’s work as a soloist has included many of the preeminent violin concertos with orchestras such as the Richmond Symphony (VA), Indianapolis Symphony Festival Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and Orbón Chamber Orchestra (Spain), among others.
An avid chamber musician of both the contemporary and traditional literature, Ariana marks her ninth season as a member of the New York contemporary music ensemble Ne(x)tworks, with whom she improvises, performs, composes, and records. The ensemble made their European debut at the John Cage Centennial Festival in Berlin in 2012. Ariana also marks her ninth season with The Knights and her tenth with the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, where recent collaborations have included performances with Leon Fleisher, Fred Sherry, Charles Neidich, Samuel Rhodes, and Nobuko Imai. Ariana currently co-resides in Ithaca and New York City, where she loves to be surrounded by family, friends, and great food.
TESSA LARK
Winner of the prestigious Naumburg International Violin Award in 2012, Tessa Lark is one of the most captivating artistic voices of her time. She has been consistently praised by critics and audiences alike for her astounding range of sounds, technical agility and musical elegance.
Tessa was recently named the Silver Medalist of the 2014 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, making her the highest-ranked American-born winner in the Competition’s history.
At age 16, Lark was soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and has since then performed concerti with the Louisville Orchestra; Santa Fe, Indianapolis, Cheyenne, Santa Cruz, Cape Ann, Melrose, Westchester and Peninsula Symphonies; Gettysburg and Mission Chamber Orchestras; Chinese Opera and Ballet Symphony Orchestra, and New England Conservatory’s Symphony Orchestra as a result of winning the school’s Violin Concerto Competition in 2010 with the Walton Violin Concerto. Lark has given many solo recitals, including her Carnegie Hall debut recital in Weill Hall and other concerts for the San Francisco Performances series, the radio broadcasted Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert series, Troy Chromatics, Ravinia’s Bennett -Gordon Classics series, Chamber Music Tulsa series, and the Caramoor Wednesday Morning Concert series. A passionate chamber musician, she has been invited to many summer festivals including Marlboro, Yellow Barn, Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival, the Perlman Music Program’s Chamber Music Workshop, and Music@Menlo. Keeping in touch with her Kentucky roots, Tessa enjoys playing bluegrass and Appalachian music. She collaborates frequently with Mark O’Connor and is included in his CD “MOC4,” released in June 2014.