Carnegie Hall Presents The Knights at Zankel Hall This May

On Thursday, May 16, 2024 at 7:30pm in Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall will present The Knights. Conducted by Artistic Director Eric Jacobsen and featuring three pieces in their New York City or world premieres, the program is a triumphant culmination of multiple key projects driven by Knights collaborations or commissions and marks the final concert of the ensemble's inaugural Carnegie Hall season.

Works by Jessie Montgomery, Gabriel Kahane and Anna Clyne, along with a selection from Mozart, are tied together through themes of heritage and family – whether it be present-day family, generations of family or a “chosen family” of dear friends.

As part of a star-studded program, the orchestra will perform the world premiere chamber orchestra arrangement of Jessie Montgomery's Rhapsody No. 2, featuring The Knights Artistic Director Colin Jacobsen as violinist (orch. for violin and chamber orchestra by Michi Wiancko). The program also features New York City premieres of special guest Gabriel Kahane's Heirloom – featuring his father, eminent conductor Jeffrey Kahane, on piano – and of Anna Clyne's Shorthand for Cello and Orchestra, featuring cellist Karen Ouzounian. Completing the program are a second Gabriel Kahane piece, "Where Are the Arms" (arr. for orchestra, vocals, and guitar), as well as Mozart's Symphony No. 31, “Paris.”

Originally composed for solo violin as part of a series honoring historical composers, Montgomery's Rhapsody No. 2. was inspired in part by Béla Bartók and featured on the album Planetary Candidate by violinist Michi Wiancko, who commissioned the work. Wiancko's own reorchestration of the piece for violin and chamber orchestra makes its world premiere in this program, featuring Knights Artistic Director and concertmaster Colin Jacobsen as soloist. The new arrangement has been commissioned by The Knights as part of The Rhapsody Project, a multi-year initiative inspired by the 2024 centennial of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Anna Clyne's Shorthand, featuring The Knights' Karen Ouzounian on solo cello, was commissioned as part of The Knights' Kreutzer Project, a program weaving the orchestra's reimaginings of Beethoven and Leos Janácek's “Kreutzer” Sonatas with contemporary responses. Taking its title from Leo Tolstoy's comment that “Music is the shorthand of emotion,” the powerful and moving Shorthand plays off of two themes from Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano (which inspired Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata), as well as a theme reminiscent of Janácek's String Quartet No. 1, "Kreutzer Sonata” (also inspired by Tolstoy's novella). Composed with Ouzounian in mind as solo cellist, the piece was premiered by Ouzounian and The Knights  at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts during the pandemic in 2020, and has since been shared with audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe.

The two Kahanes combine for the New York premiere of Heirloom, a piano concerto composed by Gabriel Kahane for his father, Jeffrey Kahane, as soloist. Co-commissioned by The Knights, with personal encouragement from Eric Jacobsen, Heirloom is described by the composer as an “aural family scrapbook,” tracing the connections between music and three generations of family history. The work's three movements bring together visions of the composer's grandmother, who fled the Holocaust, with the present-day perspective of his young daughter, the generations bound together by music. The Kansas City Symphony and Jeffrey Kahane premiered the piece in 2021.

Gabriel Kahane's “Where are the Arms,” the stirring and hymnlike title track from his 2011 album, will also be performed on this program in an arrangement for orchestra, vocals, and guitar. “Where are the Arms” also serves as source material for the first movement of Heirloom, which explores the composer's musical inheritance from his parents, who grew up playing in folk-rock bands together as teenagers in Southern California.

Completing the program is Mozart's Symphony No. 31, "Paris.” Written in 1778 – for Mozart, a year of career disappointments compounded by the death of his mother – the piece was selected as a complement to the program's themes of deep and sometimes wrenching family dynamics.

The program will be followed by a post-concert reception in Zankel Hall's Parterre Bar as part of Carnegie Hall's Mix and Mingle.

Program Information

Thursday, May 16, 2024 at 7:30pm
Carnegie Hall Presents The Knights
Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall | New York, NY
Tickets: Start at $74, through CarnegieCharge (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org, or at the Box Office on 57th Street and Seventh Avenue. 

Program:
Jessie Montgomery – Rhapsody No. 2 (orch. for violin and chamber orchestra by Michi Wiancko) [World Premiere]
Gabriel Kahane – Heirloom [New York Premiere]
Gabriel Kahane – “Where Are the Arms" (arr. for orchestra, piano, and vocals)
Anna Clyne – Shorthand for Cello and Orchestra [New York Premiere]
Mozart – Symphony No. 31, “Paris”

The Knights
Colin Jacobsen, Artistic Director and violin
Eric Jacobsen, Artistic Director and conductor
Jeffrey Kahane, piano
Karen Ouzounian, cello
with special guest Gabriel Kahane

More About The Knights

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 that encompass their roots in the classical tradition and passion for artistic discovery. The orchestra has toured and recorded with renowned soloists including Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Béla Fleck, Chris Thile, and Gil Shaham, and has appeared across the world's most prestigious stages, including those at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Ravinia, The Kennedy Center, and the Vienna Musikverein.

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. Since incorporating in 2007, the orchestra has toured consistently across the United States and Europe.

The Knights seek to share music with a broad general public regardless of background, and the group designs programs to appeal to both loyal followers and new listeners alike. The Knights perform in traditional concert halls as well as in parks, plazas, and bars, and create unusual and adventurous partnerships across disciplines. Counted among recent highlights are fully-staged performances of Bernstein's Candide at both Tanglewood and Ravinia; the release of “The Kreutzer Project” album, and the 2023 summer season featuring performances at Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell, Tanglewood, Bryant Park, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and Newport Classical Music Festival.

The orchestra seeks out and prioritizes collaborative partnerships with artists often underrepresented in classical music. Recent seasons have included performances with Brooklyn-based Pan Evolution Steel Orchestra, with African musicians as part of William Kentridge's The Head and the Load, and with a diverse group of contemporary composers and performers including Vijay Iyer, Kinan Azmeh, Angélica Negrón, and Jessie Montgomery, among others.

Artistic collaborators in the 2022-23 season included GRAMMY-winning countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo; violinist Ray Chen, who joined the orchestra for an eleven-stop European Tour; and genre-shattering pianist/composer Aaron Diehl, with whom The Knights released a GRAMMY-nominated album of Mary Lou Williams' Zodiac Suite in September 2023.

In 2024, The Knights continue their three-concert series presented by Carnegie Hall, featuring new works commissioned as part of the orchestra's Rhapsody project. Rhapsody is a multi-year initiative inspired by the 2024 centennial of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The Knights' Carnegie Hall concerts this season feature mandolinist, singer, and songwriter Chris Thile, pipa legend Wu Man, piano virtuoso Jeffrey Kahane and other esteemed collaborators.

The Knights are 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). Their roster boasts musicians of 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. Through the palpable joy and friendship in their music-making, each musician strives to include new and familiar audiences to experience this important art form.