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Fowler Center Series presents
multifaceted string quartet Brooklyn Rider March 13
Feb. 17,
2010 -- The Fowler Center Series presents
its seventh event of the 2009-10 season with multifaceted string quartet
Brooklyn Rider in
performance Saturday, March 13, at 7:30 p.m., Riceland Hall, Fowler
Center, 201 Olympic Drive, Jonesboro. Brooklyn Rider has become
increasingly known for its creative programming and
exciting collaborations which serve to illuminate music in new ways and
invite audiences into a shared experience. Uniquely able to address a
wide and inclusive range of music, they are as willing to explore the
world of Haydn as they are in the music of today.
Brooklyn Rider has performed in venues as varied as Joe’s Pub in New
York City, Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan, and the Petronas Towers in
Malaysia. Born out of a desire to use the rich medium of the string
quartet as a vehicle for borderless communication, all of the musicians
have enjoyed diverse careers in music that have intersected with each
other over many years. Personnel for Brooklyn Rider are
Colin Jacobsen, violin,
Johnny Gandelsman, violin, Nicholas Cords, viola, and
Eric Jacobsen,
cello.
The members of Brooklyn Rider are devoted to both the interpretation of
existing quartet literature and to the creation of new works. They have
worked with composers such as Chen Yi, Osvaldo Golijov, Dimitry
Yanov-Yanovsky, Shirish Korde, Ljova, and
Jenny Scheinman, as well as
the original compositions and arrangements of Brooklyn Rider’s own Colin
Jacobsen. The program Brooklyn Rider will
present at Fowler Center includes Colin Jacobsen’s "Achille’s Heel,"
Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky’s "...al niente;" Giovanni Sollima’s Federico II
from "Viaggio in Italia;" John Cage’s “In a Landscape,” arranged by
Justin Messina; and Claude Debussy’s String Quartet.
Exploring new possibilities through collaborative programs is a frequent
part of Brooklyn Rider’s work. Some examples include programs with
Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man,
Syrian/Armenian visual artist Kevork
Mourad, traditional and technology-based Japanese shakuhachi player
Kojiro Umezaki, and
singer/songwriter Christina Courtin. A long-standing relationship
with Persian kamancheh player and composer Kayhan Kalhor will result in a
CD release, “Silent City,” later this year on World Village Records, the
world music label of Harmonia Mundi.
Much of Brooklyn Rider’s desire to extend the borders of conventional
string quartet programming has been through its longstanding
participation in Yo-Yo Ma’s
Silk Road Ensemble, a group dedicated to exploring the cultural
intersections of the peoples along that ancient trade route. As members
of the ensemble, they have performed throughout the world, recorded
three albums for Sony Classical, and have reached audiences through a
series of educational initiatives, family concerts and media broadcasts.
Brooklyn Rider has also taken part in a series of museum residencies
initiated by the Silk Road Project that have taken them to the Rubin
Museum of Himalayan Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago,
the Museum Reitberg in Zurich and the Nara National Museum in Japan.
They have also participated extensively in ongoing Silk Road Ensemble
residencies at Harvard University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
As educators, members of Brooklyn Rider have been in residency at
Williams College, the University of Delaware, the School for Strings
Summer Institute in New York City, and Macphail Center for the Arts in
Minneapolis. Next year will include a week-long series of events at
Dartmouth College. They have also been featured on John Shaffer’s
Soundcheck, Minnesota Public Radio, and they were invited in 2005 to
help curate a weeklong residency at National Public Radio’s Performance
Today.
Audience engagement and outreach is an essential part of the quartet’s
creative mission. To further their reach, Brooklyn Rider often appears
under the umbrella of outside initiatives begun by all four members of
the group. Two summers ago, they collectively inaugurated the
Stillwater
Music Festival in Minnesota, providing concerts and outreach activities
designed to connect communities in the St. Croix Valley area. In 2003,
violinist Johnny Gandelsman created In A Circle, a series of performance
events in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn that explore connections between
music and the visual arts. Brothers Colin and Eric Jacobsen are the
founders of the Knights, a chamber orchestra based in New York that has
recently appeared at Long Island’s Beethoven Festival, Dublin’s National
Gallery, and will be featured next summer at the Dresden Musikfestspiele.
The quartet’s name is inspired in part by the creations, interests, and
cross-disciplinary visions of the Blue Rider group, an artistic
association founded in 1911, whose members included Vassily Kandinsky,
Franz Marc, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alexander Scriabin, as well as
others. In the spirit of those sympathetic friendships, Brooklyn Rider
has created an online art gallery (http://www.brooklynrider.com/
--click on the gallery sign)
showcasing the work of peers in the visual arts; the proceeds are used
to support new commissioned projects. The quartet also draws additional
inspiration from the exploding array of cultures and artistic energy
found in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, a place the group
calls home. Visit Brooklyn Rider online at
http://www.brooklynrider.com/ to listen to samples of their music,
read reviews of performances, view the art gallery, and view the group’s
videos.
Ticket prices are $30 and $20 for adults; $24 and $16 for ASU faculty
and staff; $23 and $15 for senior adults and K-12 students; and $10 and
$6 for ASU students. Tickets for all Fowler Center Series events may be
purchased by calling 870-972-2781 or 1-888-278-3267, or online at
www.yourfowlercenter.com.
On performance evenings, the box office in Fowler Center opens one hour
prior to the event.
Visit www.yourfowlercenter.com
for additional information, or call Fowler Center at (870) 972-3471.
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