Concert by The Knights
University Art Museum University at Albany
December 6, 2021 at 6:00pm
Presented in partnership with the UAlbany Performing Arts Center
Cover image: The Knights Group Photo 2, 2017 Photoshoot. Photography by Shervin Lainez
Concert by The Knights December 6, 2021 at 6:00pm University Art Museum, University at Albany
Performance Program Andrea Casarrubios: Amid a Place of Stone for solo violin (2020) Emily Daggett Smith, violin
Reena Esmail: Nadiya for flute and cello (2016) Alex Sopp, flute Jane Cords-O’Hara, cello
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Quintet in F-sharp Minor for Clarinet and Strings, Op. 10 (1895) I. Allegro energico II. Larghetto affetuoso III. Scherzo. Allegro leggiero IV. Finale. Allegro agitato Todd Palmer, clarinet Emily Daggett Smith and Alex Fortes, violins Mario Gotoh, viola Jane Cords-O’Hara, cello
Gabrielle Herbst: Hope, Care & Longing (2021) I. Hope II. Care & Longing Alex Sopp, flute Todd Palmer, clarinet Emily Daggett Smith, violin Jane Cords-O’Hara, cello John Ostrowski, percussion
ANDREA CASARRUBIOS: AMID A PLACE OF STONE FOR SOLO VIOLIN (2020) Andrea Casarrubios’s Amid a Place of Stone for solo violin was written in New York City in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Andrea writes: “My intention with this new work is to create an experience in which the violin will embody solitude and isolation. There will be a recurring musical cell that keeps appearing throughout the work, as a way to remind us of the repetitiveness of the everyday routine during the pandemic.” Cassarrubios further explains: “This work, conceived during the 2020 pandemic and the ensuing crisis in the performing arts, combines nocturne and passacaglia elements, and traverses a range of phases within the subjects of isolation, vulnerability, and survival.” Amid a Place of Stone opens with an outburst—a frenzied opening section that traverses the range of the instrument. This gradually slows and leads to a chord progression, which is the theme of the piece. The theme is characterized by a steady pace, double stops (playing two notes at once), dissonances, and suspensions. After a second statement of the theme an octave higher, the music leads to a section of rhythmic freedom that evokes a feeling of improvisation, as well as the character of a nocturne. Next, the music leads to the repetitive passacagliatype variations of a rhythmically steady, repeating triplet motif, which is based on the theme. The piece alternates between improvisatory rhythmic freedom, monotonous steadiness, and emotional outbursts, before moving into a new section with an ostinato drone on the open D string, evoking a folk-like song. This eventually leads to the final statement of the theme, this time in a delicate piano dynamic. Oxford languages defines a passacaglia as “a composition similar to a chaconne, typically in slow triple time with variations over a ground bass.” It originated in early 17th century Spain and is usually of a serious nature and is based on a basso ostinato, or a repeating bass line. Origin: Italian, from Spanish pasacalle, from pasar (“to pass”) and calle (“street”), because originally it was a dance often played in the streets.
ANDREA CASARRUBIOS Praised by The New York Times for having a “gorgeous tone and an edge of-seat intensity” and described by Diario de Menorca as an
“ideal performer” who offers “elegance, displayed virtuosity, and great expressive power,” Spanish cellist and composer Andrea Casarrubios has played as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. A first-prize winner of numerous international competitions and awards, Andrea has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Lincoln Center, and at the Piatigorsky International Cello Festival, the Ravinia Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, and the Verbier Festival. Casarrubios’s album, Caminante, presents some of her own original music. Released on Odradek Records, it was chosen as one of the Best 2019 Classical Music Albums by ABC Classic radio station in Australia. As a guest soloist at Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, Andrea performed her own Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, MIRAGE (2019), among other works. The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and cellist Thomas Mesa recently performed the U.S. premiere of this concerto, and SEVEN (2020) for solo cello, which The New York Times called “a searching, intense, and elegiac tribute to the essential workers during the pandemic” was commissioned by Mesa and presented at the Stern Auditorium in Carnegie Hall in 2021, among other venues. Casarrubios has also served as composer-in-residence at the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her compositions have been heard in 78 countries, and presented by organizations including the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Boccherini Music Festival, World Heritage Festival, the Sphinx Organization, Washington Performing Arts, the University of South Carolina, the Eastman School of Music, Decoda, Ensemble Connect, the Manhattan Chamber Players, Chicago’s WFMT, Canada’s CKIA, and Radio Nacional de España (Spain’s national public radio service). Casarrubios’s teachers have included Maria de Macedo, Lluís Claret, Amit Peled, Marcy Rosen, and Ralph Kirshbaum. As part of her doctoral degree, she also studied composition with John Corigliano. A passionate mentor, Andrea has taught at The Juilliard School, the University of Southern California, the Eastman School of Music, Skidmore College, Queens College, and the University of Kansas and at numerous festivals and masterclasses on tour. Her latest engagements include commissions and concerts in Canada, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, and the United States.
REENA ESMAIL: NADIYA FOR FLUTE AND CELLO (2016) Reena Esmail’s Nadiya was written in 2016. Esmail writes: “Nadiya means ‘rivers’ in Hindi. In this work, I imagine two different streams intersecting—pushing and pulling against one another, tripping over each other, flowing into each other to create mellifluous, cascading melodies. The piece is in a composite of two Hindustani raags: Jog and Vachaspati—both have a light and a dark side, and they intermingle to create a luminous surface texture that twists and turns as it finds new points of resonance.” Nadiya was commissioned by Benjamin Larsen and Martha Cargo and was generously underwritten by Henry Cox and Michael Kunkel. It was premiered in April 2017 in Newport, Rhode Island.
REENA ESMAIL Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces. Esmail’s work has been commissioned by ensembles including the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Kronos Quartet, Imani Winds, Richmond Symphony, Town Music Seattle, Albany Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Girls Chorus, the Elora Festival, Juilliard415, and Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Upcoming seasons include new work for Seattle Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Amherst College Choir and Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, and Conspirare. Esmail is the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 2020–23 Swan Family Artist-in-Residence, and Seattle Symphony’s 2020-21 Composer-inResidence. Previously, she was named a 2019 United States Artist Fellow in Music and the 2019 Grand Prize Winner of the S&R Foundation’s Washington Award. Esmail was also a 2017-18 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow. She was the recipient of the 2012 Walter Hinrichsen Award for the publication of a work by a gifted composer (this award was established by the C. F. Peters Corporation, music publishers, in 1984) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Esmail holds degrees in composition from The Juilliard School (BM’ 05) and the Yale School of Music (MM’11, MMA’14, DMA’18). Her primary teachers have included Susan Botti, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis and Martin Bresnick, Christopher Rouse and Samuel Adler. She received a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in
India. Her Hindustani music teachers include Srimati Lakshmi Shankar and Gaurav Mazundar, and she currently studies and collaborates with Saili Oak. Her doctoral thesis, entitled “Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians” explores the methods and challenges of the collaborative process between Hindustani musicians and Western composers. Esmail was composerin-residence for Street Symphony (2016-18) and is currently an artistic director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that promotes crosscultural music connecting music traditions of India and the West.
SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR: QUINTET IN F-SHARP MINOR FOR CLARINET AND STRINGS, OP. 10 (1895) Born in London in 1875 to an English mother and a physician father from Sierra Leone, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a prolific composer in his short life of 37 years. After exhibiting musical talent at a young age and becoming an accomplished violinist, he entered the Royal College of Music when he was only 15. He soon switched his major from violin to composition, and studied with Professor Charles Villiers Stanford, who along with Edward Elgar would become a champion of his work. Coleridge-Taylor had a blossoming career soon after leaving conservatory, both as a composer and a conductor, and later had three successful tours of the United States, where he was welcomed by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. After meeting American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar as well as scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, the influence of Coleridge-Taylor’s African heritage became central to his compositions. In the preface of his piano cycle 24 Negro Melodies, Coleridge-Taylor writes: “What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk-music, Dvorak for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies.” Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet was written in 1895 when he was still a student at the Royal College of Music and just 20 years old. Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet from 1891 had cast a long shadow as the ultimate example of the genre, but after a challenge from Stanford to write a clarinet quintet that was not derivative of Brahms, ColeridgeTaylor produced this remarkable piece that is entirely his own. In fact, Stanford was so happy with the piece that he brought it with him on a trip to Berlin, where he showed it to Joseph Joachim, the great violinist who worked closely with Brahms. The piece received an enthusiastic
reception from Joachim and his colleagues, as well as rave reviews from its London premieres. It was offered to the publishing company Breitkopf and Hartel, but unfortunately, they did not publish the work, and perhaps because of this it was not performed much following Coleridge-Taylor’s death. However, the quintet was finally published in 1974 by Musica Rara, which thankfully has led to more recent performances and a renewed enthusiasm for the piece. The piece is in four movements and showcases virtuoso writing for all the instruments in an organic blend of timbres and finely crafted details of texture and rhythm. It is a complex and multilayered work—the last movement brings back thematic material from earlier movements to provide a cyclical unity—while also being effortlessly beautiful and lyrical. The opening Allegro energico is in an unusual 6/4 time key signature, and alternates between driving intensity and folk-like dance. Indeed, the influence of folk music (perhaps partly inspired by Dvorak) touches all of the movements, including the second movement’s generous and gorgeously serene melody, the off-kilter time signatures of the third movement, and the “Scotch snap” (syncopated rhythm) of the final movement. It is a remarkable piece, especially for such a young man who was still a student; a masterful work that thankfully now is getting the recognition it deserves.
GABRIELLE HERBST: HOPE, CARE & LONGING (2021) Gabrielle Herbst’s Hope, Care & Longing (2021) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and percussion was commissioned by The Knights Chamber Orchestra with the support of the University Art Museum at the University at Albany and will be premiered on December 6, 2021. Herbst writes: Hope, Care & Longing (2021) is a work inspired by finding new ways of taking care of one another. Sound is the way I feel closest to connecting with others, and my hope is that this piece invites you into a space of connection and warmth.” The piece is in two movements, entitled “Hope” and “Care & Longing.”
GABRIELLE HERBST Gabrielle Herbst (b. 1986) is a composer, vocalist, and educator. She seeks honesty and intimacy in her music. She has received commissions from Roulette and the Jerome Foundation, the Nouveau Classical Project, Duo Noir, Experiments in Opera, Fresh Squeezed
Opera, and MATA Festival, and contributed to the opera Magdalene as part of the Prototype Festival 2020 in NYC. She has been composerin-residence at the Watermill Center, Exploring the Metropolis, Inc., Atlantic Center for the Arts, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Roulette, The New York Theater Workshop, and Pioneer Works. She has had her compositions presented at venues including National Sawdust, The Stone, ISSUE Project Room, HERE Arts Center, the National Guitar Society, MATA, and Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium. She released her debut album Sympathy on Software Recording Co. in 2015. Tour highlights included David Byrne’s Meltdown Festival, London; Pop Kultur Festival, Berlin; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam; The Great Escape, Brighton, U.K.; Marfa Myths Festival, Texas; The Wick presented by Pitchfork; and a series at Roulette with Missy Mazzoli curated by Meredith Monk. Herbst released her sophomore album, Empty Me, on Double Double Whammy in 2018. She is a current fellow with The American Opera Project. She graduated from the Yale School of Music, where she studied composition with Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, and David Lang.
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, 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 a recording of the Brahms and Beethoven Violin Concertos with Gil Shaham; and a full 2021 summer season in a reawakened New York City, with performances at Central Park’s Naumburg Bandshell, Bryant Park, Governors Island, and Green-Wood Cemetery. 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. The Knights also present a Family Concert series, with performances at venues such as BRIC in Brooklyn and virtual events available on YouTube and The Knights’ website. Accompanying educational and engagement activities, in collaboration with five Brooklyn schools, reach over 400 students annually through in-class visits, workshops, and open rehearsals, all offered free of charge to the schools. The upcoming 2021-22 season features a U.S. tour with virtuoso pianist and composer Aaron Diehl; a collaboration with dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp; a new residency partnership with storied New York City venue 92Y; and the release of a long-anticipated holiday album, The Knights Before Christmas, in late 2021. 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 bring this important art form to new and familiar audiences.
University Art Museum University at Albany Well/Being: An Exhibition on Healing and Repair August 4 – December 11, 2021
For additional information, please visit the Museum’s website: www.albany.edu/museum Support for the University Art Museum exhibitions and programs is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, and the University at Albany Alumni Association. Additional support for programming is provided by University Auxiliary Services at Albany, the UAlbany Performing Arts Center, the Jack and Gertrude Horan Memorial Endowment Fund for Student Outreach, and the New York State DanceForce, a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the New York State Governor and Legislature Special thanks to the Department of Music and Theatre for loaning instruments.