What happens when a mandolinist plays with an orchestra? The quality of sound in the mandolin — the quickly shifting, shimmering tones of innovative contemporary bluegrass — guides the full sound of double reeds, flute and clarinet and brass …
What happens when Grammy Award-winning singer songwriter Chris Thile meets The Knights, an internationally acclaimed orchestral collective ‘on a quest to expand the boundaries of classical music’? …
Internationally acclaimed composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery sits with her violin. Press photo courtesy of the BSO and the composer.
Close look …
The Knights and Chris Thile perform in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, June 29 at 8 p.m. Program:
Chris Thile — Attention (A narrative song cycle for extroverted mandolinist and orchestra)
Jessie Montgomery — Source Code
A work inspired by ‘gestures, sentences, and musical syntax (the bare bones of rhythm and inflection) by choreographer Alvin Ailey, poets Langston Hughes and Rita Dove, and the great jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald …’
Bartok — Romanian Folk Dances arranged by Alex Fortes — violinist in the Knights
Enesco — Romanian Rhapsody No. 1
At Tanglewood on June 29, they will perform the world premiere of Attention (A narrative song cycle for extroverted mandolinist and orchestra), a work they have co-commisioned and created together — in the vibrant company of Jessie Montgomery’s Source Code, Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances and Enesco’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 1.
It is, Knights conductor, co-artistic director and acclaimed cellist Eric Jacobsen agreed, a gorgeous variety of music — as he and Alex Sopp, internationally recognized flutist with yMusic, The Knights and NOW Ensemble, took time to talk in a fast-moving summer about this new collaboration.
‘We have to dig in, because the work hasn’t been brought to life yet, and we’re excited.’ — Eric Jacobsen, co-director of the Knights
“That is definitely the truth,” Jacobsen said. “And honestly, we don’t even know how varied it is, because we’re doing the world premiere.”
And it has just become the world premiere. Tanglewood would originally have held the second performance, Jacobsen explained. Thile was supposed to premiere the work with the Knights three weeks ago in Virginia, and he had to postpone, so this concert will become the true launch.
“We have to dig in,” Jacobsen said, “because it hasn’t been brought to life yet, so we’re excited.”
He and Sopp describe the song cycle with deep roots in classical and folk traditions — agile and complex, lit with lived experience and humor.
Thile has a name for originality, versatility and connections that reach around the world. A MacArthur Fellow, he has won international recognition as a founding member of the roots and Bluegrass groups Nickel Creek and the Punch Brothers, and for four years he hosted the widely acclaimed American Public Radio show Live from Here (formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion).
His new work glimmers and teases even in the names of its four parts:
1. Attention
2. Lord Starbucks
3. The Rooftop
4. Carrie Freaking Fisher
Sopp, laughing, describes Attention as the account of a specific evening of Chris’s life, when many ridiculous and wonderful things collide. And it gleefully stretches the definition of an orchestral performance.
Internationally acclaimed mandolinist Chris Thile stands with his mandolin in the shadow of a stone archway. Press photo courtesy of the artist
“At a pivotal scene, maybe three quarters of the way through the the piece,” she said — “and I say scene because it’s very dramatic — I get to stand up from within the flute section and almost heckle Chris as a character in this story, by singing, and so I am really looking forward to that.”
The partnership has been a long time in the making, Jacobsen said. Ten years ago, the Knights were programming the annual jazz, roots, classical and global music festival at Caramoor, when they first thought of asking Thile to write a song cycle with them.
Jacobsen and Thile had crossed paths — as acclaimed cellist in Brooklyn, N.Y., and co-founder and conductor of the Knights, Jacobsen was and is performing and collaborating with a global range of musicians — Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk road Project, Grammy awardwinners Jewish violinist Gil Shaham, soprano Renée Fleming and American jazz fiddler Mark O’Connor, violinist and world phenomenon Ray Chen, alt-rock singer songwriter Natalie Merchant …
Over the years, he said, he and Thile have grown many more connections, through collaborations and performances, and through Jacobsen’s wife, Aoife O’Donovan, the internationally acclaimed singer songwriter and co-founder of the bands I’m With Her and Crooked Still, who often works and sings with Thile and has performed with him in Live from here and in The Goat Rodeo Sessions with Yo-Yo Ma.
Sopp has also gotten to know Thile from many directions, she said. As a flutist in Brooklyn, she has commissioned, premiered, and recorded with composers and songwriters from Nico Muhly and Jonsí of Sigur Ros to Gabriel Kahane and Paul Simon. In her work with the New York sextet YMusic, Thile has written music for them, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered there.
“In my experience of working on that piece, ‘134 Eldridge Street’,” Sopp said, “… he asks so much of each player, from a virtuosic standpoint and also from a stylistic standpoint … It’s a total thrill to play his instrumental writing, and this piece was one of the first pieces he wrote purely for other instrumentalists to perform without himself.”
‘He asks so much of each player, from a virtuosic standpoint and also from a stylistic standpoint … It’s a total thrill to play his instrumental writing.’ — flutist Alex Sopp
And so, in the middle of the pandemic, Jacobsen and the Knights came back to Thile with the idea of working together.
“After getting to play with him in various forms, as a cellist and then going on his incredible radio show,” Jacobsen said, “many dinners and bottles of wine later, I was with him — now, it was in the Berkshires two years ago, around Christmas time. He came up with his family, and we did a live broadcast from our place up there.
“And at one dinner, he said, you know, maybe we should do that piece. And I was like, ‘yes, of course, of course we should do that piece. When? When? When? Let’s do it!’”
The Knights look offstage at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany during their February 2019 Europe Tour with Avi Avital.
Sopp shared his excitement and pleasure. She has loved working with Thile as a musician and as a composer, she said — she finds his music virtuosic and complex, beautiful and pure.
“He is just an absolutely insane musician,” she said. “I remember first time meeting him and watching how he absorbs music in the craziest, most unbelievable way to witness. … And I’m really excited to see how he just blows up the orchestra with his fiery writing.”
She and Jacobsen considered the tone of a mandolin in harmony with their own instruments. The mandolin has a sound more like a harp or a piano or percussion instrument than a flute or a violin, Jacobsen said.
“The sound has no sustain,” he said, “and it has that immediacy. From being a string player myself, (I know the feeling) when your bow hits the string, that moment of impact — how different that is from when you take your finger and you pluck the string … because as much as you can be on top of it, there is a different moment that the ear processes that sound.”
Thile sets a challenge for an orchestra of 30 people, let alone 80, to keep on top of the beat, Jacobsen said, because each sound has a delayed response. It’s like communication over a long distance.
‘When you have a soloist as a mandolin player with Chris’s deep sense of rhythm, the groove is just so incredible. We need to feel that incredibly deep groove as an orchestra, with him.’ — Eric Jacobsen
“But when you have a soloist as a mandolin player with Chris’s deep sense of rhythm,” he said, “the groove is just so incredible.”
“… We need to feel that incredibly deep groove as an orchestra, with him. I think that’s so, so present in his music. And that’s not to take away from the lyricism, the dramaticism and everything else.”
When Sopp listens to Thile play, and when she has the chance to share the stage with him, she is struck powerfully by his sense of calm.
“That is at the heart of a true virtuoso,” she said — “complete ease.”
“And I think that’s going to be the key for unlocking this piece with the orchestras. We have the sea of bodies and the sea of sound, but you can’t get too muscly with it, because otherwise the music doesn’t lift off and capture the spirit that it’s meant to capture.”
Thile often collaborates with tight-knit groups, from his trios to classical chamber ensembles. Working with a full orchestra, he thinks of the Knights, Jacobsen suggests, as a band with a different variety of colors, like a palette that expands.
‘This is how music lifts off and becomes a part of history over time. — Eric Jacobsen’
Jacobsen looks back warmly on the experience of making the work together. Getting to work on a piece with the person who wrote it, who is in the room as the musicians learn and experience the music for the first time, is an amazing gift, he said — a process that can be precise, fine-tuned and improvisational all at once.
“You hear something for the first time,” he said, “and then (you can) shout back or not shout back — hey, how about like this — and then … he’ll play it on his mandolin or he’ll sing it. And I mean, this is how music is. This is how music lifts off and becomes a part of history over time.
“It’s amazing to work like that with someone someone like Chris or someone like Aoife, and then also to be reminded that this is how people have been working for centuries. … And that kind of dialogue between past and present I think is really at the core of who the Knights are, and how we seek to encounter all kinds of music.”
Colin Jacobsen at the Brooklyn Farmer’s Market as part of a Knights Community Engagement Performance. Photo courtesy of the artist
