Critical Acclaim
New York Magazine
Jan 27, 2008
By Justin Davidson
In small new-music venues, failure is an
option—and a route to success.
“On my first visit to the Brooklyn Lyceum in Park Slope, Fourth Avenue had reached that unique pitch of joylessness characteristic of a dismal urban artery on a rainy winter night. A sign in front of a closed auto-parts store flickered in the downpour, and passing cars slung their wakes against the occasional pedestrian. The Lyceum showed every one of its hundred years, but it was full of people happy to be hearing music they didn’t already know. Outside, the building still sports the markers of its former life as a public bath: women over one door, men on the other, and up near the cornice a flow of stylized water done in terra-cotta tiles. The cavernous interior has been scraped back to bare brick and given over to a mostly local assortment of live art and movies. On that night, hundreds packed in to hear the Iranian kamancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor and his cross-cultural partners, the string quartet called Brooklyn Rider.
The concert opened with a short set by Zulal, an a cappella trio of Armenian-American women who refract ancestral folk songs through the prism of the collegiate close-harmony group, and do so to spectacular effect. Then it was on to Iran, where violinist Colin Jacobsen had traveled, collecting melodies and arranging them for string quartet, in the spirit of the composer-ethnologist Béla Bartók. Kalhor eventually emerged to play his own piece for quartet and kamancheh, a Persian fiddle. Silent City began with a quiet, amorphous buzzing that gradually thickened and acquired urgency, its repetitive shivers intensifying into a fortissimo throb. That broke off, and the kamancheh wandered plaintively and alone into the still night, before rejoining the other strings in a section that for me evoked a Biedermeier parlor, full of Schubertian counterpoint and accompanying pizzicati. It was as if Silent City had started out on forlorn Fourth Avenue, traversed a hypnotic, exalted landscape, and somehow wound up in Vienna.
...New York’s complicated new-music scene is thriving: Here, and in an assortment of other non–concert halls where ticket prices are modest, the dress code is scruffy and the vibe is one of curiosity rather than reverence. A musically voracious crowd packs into bars, Tribeca art galleries, raw performance spaces in Brooklyn, and ad hoc rooms with folding chairs. One piece might offer a raucous electric explosion, another an incantatory murmur, and a third a throbbing romantic melody—or all of the above, in quick succession. It’s Soho in the seventies all over again, with more aesthetic variety. There’s bad (and mediocre, and flat-out lame) along with the good, to be sure, but that’s part of a healthy experimental-music world. Experiments fail, and in doing so they return results.
...Today’s young composers and freelance musicians have become entrepreneurial multitaskers. They organize concerts and master electric versions of their instruments. They double as mandolin players, countertenors, sound engineers, and publicists. They play each other’s music, attend each other’s concerts, and ladle each other’s successful ideas liberally into their own compositions. To pick one example among many, the Juilliard-trained violist Lev Zhurbin, also known as “Ljova,” has played with Yo-Yo Ma and appeared at Zankel Hall, and it was he who arranged Kalhor’s Silent City for string quartet. But he’s probably most at home with his band the Vjola Contraband, which I also heard at Joe’s Pub, performing what might be described as Eastern European avant-folk.
...Ironically, this underground scene can exist in part because the classical establishment has been both envious and supportive. Carnegie Hall commissioned Kalhor’s piece and has hosted many of the musicians. In return, events like these help keep the juggernauts healthy because they disprove the theory that audiences demand only greatness and a repertoire triple-filtered by history. That’s a form of condescension I have never understood. ...We don’t ask that every meal be reliably ambrosial. We don’t read only novels that we know will be transporting. In music, too, the public can tolerate disappointment in exchange for the nourishment that comes from a lack of expectations and the exciting uncertainty of not quite knowing how to judge.”
The Strad Magazine
December, 2007
“Brooklyn Rider, a young string quartet based in Brooklyn and consisting of members of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, is gradually building a presence in New York and beyond. Appearing at Bargemusic (12 September), the young ensemble gave the premiere of Brooklesca, an international medley of Chinese, Persian, gypsy, and klezmer styles written by the group's violinist Colin Jacobsen (the other members are violinist Johnny Gandelsman, violist Nicholas Cords and cellist Eric Jacobsen).
As the title suggests, Brooklesca is a musical tour of the various nationalties that reside in New York's most populous borough, and with its driving rhythmic ostinatos, Eastern scales and quasi-improvised riffa, it could easily sound comfortable in a dark, smoky hookah bar. Joining the ensemble was the Chinese-American pipa player Wu Man, who not only enriched the group's texture but also provided an arrangement: Red, Blue and Green for pipa, quartet and percussion, a short gypsy-flavored piece written by the New York composer Ljova. Also on the program was an elegant and sturdy reading of the Brahms String Quartet in A minor op. 51 no.2.”
The New Yorker
September 17, 2007
“Few young artists are as versatile as the four gentlemen of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, whose members-the violist Nicholas Cords, violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen and Jacobsen's cello-playing brother, Eric- are veterans of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road project as well as expert advocates for the classical repertory.”
Newark Star Ledger
August 21, 2006
“...They had selected such an interesting program and played it with a rawness and verve that was gripping in the Barge's intimate space... This was beautiful listening.”
The Williams Record
March 15, 2005
“The group’s skill and refined technique was evident from the very beginning of the first piece, “Standchen.” They did not exaggerate their dynamics as some performers feel pressured to do when confronted with the expanses of Chapin Hall, trying to fill its entire inner chamber with sound. Instead, they tastefully held back whenever the music required it, sometimes quieting down to nearly a whisper.
... (Williams College) music department’s recent Debussy marathon ended with that French composer’s Eastern-influenced “String Quartet in G Minor.” The work, better-known than the other pieces on the program, was interpreted masterfully...
The quartet took a surprisingly flowing, legato reading of the resolute first movement, focusing far more on their sound as an ensemble than on solo performances. ...the overall effect was beautiful.
The performers were especially animated during this piece, nearly bouncing out of their chairs – and yes, breaking a bow hair or two in the process. Their playing throughout was entrancing not only in its energy, but in its sheer virtuosity; they turned in a performance of the Debussy quartet that, like the rest of the concert that had preceded it, was nothing short of astounding.”