2024/25 Season
Ticket & Subscription Information
Purchase your subscription package to The Knights’ three-concert series today! Beginning May 16th, you can "Create Your Own Series" by mixing and matching a Knights performance with additional events presented by Carnegie Hall across the entire season. Individual concert tickets will go on sale on August 12th. We hope you can join us!
Thursday, October 24, 2024 with Aaron Diehl
PROGRAM
Keith Jarrett arr. Michael P Atkinson Suite from Book of Ways featuring Aaron Diehl, piano (World Premiere)
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60
Michael Schachter New Work / Rhapsody featuring Aaron Diehl, piano (World Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
George Gershwin arr. Michael P. Atkinson Rhapsody in Blue, featuring Aaron Diehl, piano
The intrepid orchestral ensemble The Knights continues their multi-year Rhapsody commissioning project, inspired by the Rhapsody in Blue centennial. They invite several of today’s most visionary composers to create an original rhapsody, which artistic directors Colin and Eric Jacobsen describe as “one of the most ecstatically joyful expressions of art ... [a] combination of virtuosity, improvisation, and unfettered imagination.” In this program, pianist and master improviser Aaron Diehl joins The Knights, conducted by Eric Jacobsen, in a world premiere by Michael Schachter, a new suite of music by Keith Jarrett as arranged by Michael P. Atkinson, and the rhapsodic Gershwin masterpiece. The orchestra also treats audiences to Beethoven’s exhilarating Fourth Symphony.
Thursday, February 20, 2025 with Aoife O’Donovan
PROGRAM
W.A. Mozart Overture to Le Nozze di Figaro
Aoife O'Donovan arr. Tanner Porter America, Come featuring Aoife O'Donovan, vocals
Felix Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 "Scottish"
Traditional Scottish Folk Tunes
Experience the majestic “Scottish” Symphony like never before, as The Knights, led by conductor Eric Jacobsen, intersperse the piece with traditional Scottish tunes, bringing a fresh context to one of Felix Mendelssohn’s great orchestral works. Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan joins the ensemble to perform America, Come, an original suite inspired by the lives, letters, and speeches of Carrie Chapman Catt and President Woodrow Wilson in the summer of 1920, when the suffragists made their pivotal march to Tennessee. The program opens with the brisk, timeless overture to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.
Thursday, MAY 15, 2025 with Christina Courtin, Alex Sopp, and Kathryn Muller
PROGRAM
Christina Courtin & Alex Sopp “Pea Pretty and the Blue”
Reena Esmail The History of Red featuring Kathryn Mueller, soprano (New York City Premiere)
Christina Courtin New Rhapsody for Orchestra (World Premiere)
Antonín Dvořák Serenade for Strings in E major, Op. 22 B52
The Knights is a self-described “fellowship of adventurous musicians” known for transforming the orchestral concert experience. In this concert, led by Artistic Director and violinist Colin Jacobsen, they perform a time-tested masterpiece—Dvořák’s ever-popular Serenade for Strings—alongside the New York City premiere of Reena Esmail’s The History of Red, a stirring work for chamber orchestra and soprano, inspired in part by Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915. The program also highlights the extraordinary compositional talents of The Knights’ own members, with a world premiere by violinist and vocalist Christina Courtin and a piece written collaboratively by Ms. Courtin with flutist and vocalist Alex Sopp.
2023/24 Season
Individual concert tickets are still available for the remaining performances of our 2023/24 season, including must-see premieres by Du Yun, Jessie Montgomery & Michi Wiancko, Gabriel Kahane, and Anna Clyne, with special guest performances by Wu Man, Magos Herrera, and Jeffrey Kahane.
Thursday, October 26, 2023 with Chris Thile
PROGRAM
J.S. Bach I. Vivace from Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, BWV 1043, featuring Chris Thile, mandolin and Colin Jacobsen, violin (trans. Thile)
Caroline Shaw Is A Rose: No. 2, And So
with Chris Thile, mandolin and vocals
Antonin Dvorak (arr. by Curtis Stewart) String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96 “American”
Colin Jacobsen Sheriff's Freud
Chris Thile ATTENTION!
(A narrative song cycle for extroverted mandolinist and orchestra)
1. Attention
2. Lord Starbucks
3. The Rooftop
4. Carrie Freaking Fisher
Claire Coffee, director
The Knights join forces with mandolinist, composer, and singer Chris Thile in an exploration of American music, old and new (and a little Bach). Thile’s new work, a Carnegie Hall co-commission, will feature his brilliant songwriting and storytelling, instrumental virtuosity, and ever-present sense of humor. Thile also joins The Knights to sing a version of Caroline Shaw's exquisite and poetic meditation on the nature of a rose. Dvorak's famed “American” Quartet is re-imagined through the lens of violinist and composer Curtis Stewart as a chamber orchestra, folk-inspired jam session, and Colin Jacobsen's Sheriff's Freud brings together the world of Dvorak - in some ways a founding figure in the development of American music - with bluegrass idioms. And finally, some Bach. Why? Because Bach is always a good idea...
The Knights thank James Attwood and Leslie Williams for their generous sponsorship of soloist Chris Thile at Carnegie Hall on October 26th.
Thursday, February 29, 2024 with Wu Man, Christina Courtin, and Magos Herrera
PROGRAM
Maurice Ravel Le tombeau de Couperin
Du Yun Ears of the Book - Concerto for Pipa and Orchestra, featuring Wu Man (World Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
Kurt Weill Symphony No. 1, “Berliner Symphonie”
Bob Dylan “When the Ship Comes In” (arr. Christina Courtin)
Kurt Weill “Alabama Song” (arr. Christina Courtin)
Chico Buarque “Geni e o Zepelim” featuring Magos Herrera, vocals (arr. Colin Jacobsen)
Continuing The Knights’ long-standing relationship with pipa legend Wu Man, this program will feature the world premiere performance of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun’s new work for pipa and orchestra and explore themes of cultural memory, transformation of old into new, and a sense of theatricality within both instrumental and vocal music.
Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin was written in loving memory of friends he lost in World War I and channels the forms and clean lines of the French Baroque style. Du Yun’s piece, Ears of the Book, is inspired by regional Chinese opera styles, which are increasingly in danger of being lost in modern China. The young Kurt Weill’s Weimar-era Symphony No. 1 (“Berliner”) contains some of the hallmarks of what were to become his operatic, cabaret style in songs like Alabama Song and Pirate Jenny, which in turn went on to influence artists as diverse as American folk icon Bob Dylan, rock-band The Doors, and the beloved Brazilian songwriter Chico Buarque.
Thursday, MAY 16, 2024 with JEffrey Kahane, Colin Jacobsen, Karen Ouzounian, and Special Guest GABRIEL KAHANE
PROGRAM
Jessie Montgomery Rhapsody No. 2 featuring Colin Jacobsen, violin (orch. for violin and chamber orchestra by Michi Wiancko; World Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
Gabriel Kahane Heirloom featuring Jeffrey Kahane, piano (NY Premiere)
Gabriel Kahane Where are the Arms featuring Gabriel Kahane, vocals & Jeffrey Kahane, piano
Anna Clyne Shorthand featuring Karen Ouzounian, cello (NY Premiere)
W.A. Mozart Symphony No. 31, "Paris"
This program is inspired by deep familial relationships and friendships that have yielded profoundly personal and compelling music. Gabriel Kahane's Heirloom, a new piano concerto written for his father, the noted pianist Jeffrey Kahane, channels numerous themes of cross-generational and cross-cultural musical inspiration; from a paternal grandmother escaping the Holocaust in 1938 ("My Grandmother Knew Alban Berg”), to the tension between classical and popular music forms ("Guitars in the Attic"), to the wonder of seeing the world through the eyes of his young daughter ("Vera's Chicken-Powered Transit Machine").
Kahane’s Heirloom and selected songs are paired with Mozart's “Paris” Symphony, written during a time of great familial upheaval and difficulty, and two gorgeous contemporary works for solo strings and orchestra by Anna Clyne and Jessie Montgomery.
Supporting the Carnegie Series
The Knights thank Gary L. Wasserman and Charles A. Kashner for their generous sponsorship support of the 2023/24 Knights Concert Series at Carnegie Hall.
To learn more about sponsorships in support of our Carnegie Hall performances, please contact The Knights’ Executive Director Kristen Linfante at kristen@theknightsnyc.com.