Brooklyn Rider Plays Philip Glass

A long and continuing relationship with the inimitable composer Philip Glass has resulted in three albums, featuring all 8 of his string quartets, the one-movement Quartettsatz, the Suite from Bent, and the premiere recording of the piano quintet Annunciation, with pianist Paul Barnes.

Gabriel Kahane & Brooklyn Rider
The Fiction Issue (2016)

2016 saw the release of The Fiction Issue, our collaboration with crackerjack singer-songwriter-composer Gabriel Kahane to universal praise among audiences and critics alike. Features the Carnegie Hall commission “The Fiction Issue” with the inimitable singer Shara Nova, “Come On All You Ghosts” (texts by Matthew Zapruder), and Bradbury Studies, a compositional unraveling of the song “Bradbury (304 Broadway)” from Kahane’s 2014 release, The Ambassador.

“Rigorously mapped melancholy. Kahane and Brooklyn Rider exemplify current musical impulses, honoring the stylistic gamut of omnivorous curiosity.” –The Boston Globe

“(Fiction Issue)...a post-Sept.11 piece of art, concerned with the ways a society carries on after collective tragedy.” –The New York Times

“The performances on the album are stunning. One of the most unique albums I’ve heard in a while.” –I Care If You Listen

Joshua Redman & Brooklyn Rider
Sun On Sand (2019)

Released in October 2019, this album comprises eight compositions from a suite by composer Patrick Zimmerli. Each piece, which premiered at London’s Wigmore Hall in 2014, represents a different expression of light. Featuring Joshua Redman on tenor sax, Scott Colley on bass, and Satoshi Takeishi on drums.

Best Albums of 2019 –Blinded by Sound

“Energy, clarity of thought and complex tonal palette.” –Financial Times

“Frantic energy that still maintains incredible discipline.” –Stereogum 

“This combination works wonders. An album I will regularly return to.” –Jazz Journal

“Kinetic, richly attenuated album.” –All Music Guide

“So good.” –Pop Matters

Chalk And Soot

Born out of a close collaboration with choreographer John Heginbotham and his company Dance Heginbotham, Chalk and Soot is a song cycle by our dear Colin that uses text from a book of prose poetry and woodcut illustrations by the painter Wassily Kandinsky called Klange (Sounds). With vocalists Shara Nova (of My Brightest Diamond) and Gabriel Kahane as muses, Colin sets the absurd, colorful, figurative, and pastoral scenes of Kandinsky’s proto-Dadaist poetry from 1912 (during the time of the Der Blaue Reiter – inspiration for our quartet’s name) in an eclectic manner, mirroring the diverse artistic inspirations of Kandinsky and his circle of artists that also included composer Arnold Schoenberg.

Béla Fleck & Brooklyn Rider (2013)

Our fruitful collaboration with banjo phenomenon Béla Fleck has led to us appearing on two albums, Juno Concerto (2017) and The Impostor (2013), as well as the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

“A tonal and harmonic inquiry that is at once playful and sophisticated. Deeply satisfying” –All Music Guide

“A new entity that obliterates genre and the roles of the instruments involved” –Relix

Some Of A Thousand Words (2013)

Some of a Thousand Words is a collaboration between Wendy Whelan, Brian Brooks, and Brooklyn Rider. The evening includes the duet “First Fall”, which Wendy and Brian first developed for Restless Creature  (co-produced by The Joyce Theater in 2013). “First Fall” bears testament to the personal friendship and effervescent artistic chemistry which emerged from these two collaborators. Wendy and Brian further explore this relationship with Brooklyn Rider, who perform existing music from composers John Luther Adams, Jacob Cooper, Tyondai Braxton, Philip Glass, Evan Ziporyn and a new composition from Brooklyn Rider’s own Colin Jacobsen.