SECOND INVERSION PRESENTS: Gabriel Kahane & Brooklyn Rider at the Tractor Tavern

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Join Second Inversion and KING FM at The Tractor Tavern on Monday, February 1 at 8pm for a concert with Gabriel Kahane and Brooklyn Rider!

This show is in celebration of their new collaborative album, The Fiction Issue (also featuring Shara Worden) and will feature Kahane’s song cycle for string quartet and voice, Come On All You Ghosts. They will also perform works from The Brooklyn Rider Almanac, The Ambassador (both have been featured as Second Inversion Albums of the Week!), and Schubert’s Rosamunde, a Brooklyn Rider favorite.

Get your tickets, RSVP to the Facebook event, and invite your friends!

Not in Seattle?  Check the tour schedules for both Gabriel Kahane and Brooklyn Rider to find out where they’ll be, together and separate, in city near you.

And to whet your appetite,  a special preview of The Fiction Issueavailable February 5:

LIVE BROADCAST: Johnny Gandelsman, violin

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Our first LIVE broadcast of the season is coming up on Wednesday, September 30 at 7:30pm PT! Brooklyn Rider‘s Johnny Gandelsman performs Bach’s “Complete Sonatas and Partitas” on the Town Music at Town Hall season opener. Hold up. All Bach… on Second Inversion?!

As Joshua Roman explains in his post on Programming a Classical Season at Town Hall… “Every season includes music by J.S. Bach, whether it’s a concert of Bach or mixed in other programs. I love Bach, and find it an ideal anchor for explorations of many kinds of music. In past seasons, Bach has been played by Baroque specialists like Catharina Meints and paired with other music, like Karen Gomyo’s evening of Bach and Piazzolla. This season, Johnny Gandelsman plays all six Sonatas and Partitas. Yesss…”

It’s a good reminder that all music was new once and who better present Bach than Johnny Gandelsman, a violinist in one of the most forward-thinking, innovative, new-music embracing string quartets, Brooklyn Rider?

We hope that if you’re in Seattle, you’ll come hear the concert in person (and say “Hi!” to KING FM and Second Inversion at the broadcast table in the lobby). For Johnny & Bach lovers worldwide, tune in on Wednesday, September 30 at 7:30pm PT! On the go? Be sure to download our mobile app to listen anywhere.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: The Brooklyn Rider Almanac

by Maggie Stapleton

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Since the birth of Second Inversion, Brooklyn Rider‘s versatile recordings of new music for string quartet have been a significant presence on our airwaves.  Eric, Nick, Johnny, and Colin also captured our hearts with a great Vine video musically depicting and celebrating “Second Inversion,” back in February 2014.

To celebrate ten years together as a quartet, they created The Brooklyn Rider Almanac. This is a collection of thirteen new compositions for string quartet mostly by composers rooted in jazz, rock, or folk music. It’s an incredible celebration of Brooklyn Rider’s musical connections in the last decade (the composers are self-proclaimed “musical crushes” and old friends) and for posterity, an expansion of the string quartet repertoire.  Furthermore, the project is “about inspiration, about music being the tip of a bigger iceberg,” according to Colin Jacobsen.

Each composer indicates from which literary, musical, dance, or other artistic source the inspiration is drawn.  You’ll hear music by Vijay Iyer inspired by James Brown (it grooves, hard, and requires the musicians to extend their rhythmic techniques with polyrhythmic stomping while playing); Christina Courtin inspired by Stravinsky (full of neo-classical Pulcinella-esque charm); Aoife O’Donovan inspired by William Faulkner (what I’d give to be in Mississippi, drinking a mint julep while listening to this…)

My personal favorite track on the record is Colin Jacobsen’s “Exit,” featuring the versatile vocalist Shara Worden.  With a light texture of percussive hand claps, plucking pizzicati, and pointed vocal sounds, there’s an undertone of minimalism in this piece in a beautifully “less is more,” simplistic way.  Colin Jacobsen cites three sources of inspiration of this piece.  First is Shara Worden and her dichotomy of not giving any excess in what she sings, yet still diving head first and inhabiting the role of whatever she’s singing.  Second is Kandinsky, who happens to be the lyricist of the song – “Exit” comes from a book poems and woodcut etchings called Sounds, written at a time when he was going toward abstract painting and trying to get away from the literal meaning of words.  Thirdly, Jacobsen draws from David Byrnes’ How Music Works by finding just the groove that is necessary for the piece to happen and not putting anything else there.

In regard to each individual piece and the collection as a whole, it’s best for me to keep it simple and just say this music is GOOD.  The type of “hand it to my friends who have little or no interest in classical music and say, ‘stop what you’re doing and LISTEN TO THIS NOW!'” good.  It rethinks classical music AND the string quartet with a timeless quality, putting a stamp on the fact that music doesn’t need labels or categories or genres.  Put these four (or five, in “Exit”) musicians together who can not only play music well, but express emotion and breathe life into the notes on a page, and the magic is there.

Get your own copy on Amazon or iTunes (it comes with 2 bonus tracks if you purchase on iTunes!) of the Brooklyn Rider Almanac and keep an eye on their tour schedule for a performance near you!

 

A VISIT FROM BROOKLYN RIDER

by Jill Kimball

Our favorite wacky string quartet from–you guessed it–Brooklyn paid us a visit today! They were on the way to their performance with banjo sensation Bela Fleck at the UW World Series. We were honored to have them!

Thanks for visiting our studios, Brooklyn Rider!

(That’s our own Maggie Stapleton with members of Brooklyn Rider.)

As we’re preparing to launch the Second Inversion stream, we’ve been welcoming some class acts into the Classical KING FM studios to record interviews, liners, and even some music. This was our favorite visit yet, for reasons which become obvious below…