Celebrating 20 years together, the four members of Brooklyn Rider are back at UKARIA with this survey of the string quartet tradition. Built around core works by Haydn, Beethoven, JS Bach and Schoenberg, their thematic programming promises to examine democracy and citizenship, including a visit to the pre-WWI world of Der Blaue Reiter (their namesake) and a healing meditation bookended by John Cage and Philip Glass. They are joined by soprano Ariadne Greif, dancers Melissa Toogood and Fiona Jopp, and a string quartet from ANAM.

Limelight Editor’s Choice

In Citizenship Notes, the string quartet is posited as a microcosmic democracy; a highly engaged ecosystem of equal voices with  clear rights and responsibilities. The flattened hierarchy of Haydn’s novel string quartet writing directly mirrors the  contemporaneous societal shifts afoot in the Age of Enlightenment.

Two new commissions explore questions of citizenship and democracy in the twenty-first century including the visionary jazz musician Matana Roberts’ searing commentary (in the form of a visual score) on the US-Mexico border crisis and songwriter/composer Gabriel Kahane’s American Studies, based on a song from his widely acclaimed album Magnificent Bird. BR’s own Colin Jacobsen then puts his unique spin on the Bob Dylan civil rights era classic.

Lastly, written on the heels of his Eroica Symphony, Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 continues on heroic and egalitarian themes. Perhaps owing to his mentor Haydn’s example, the choice of a fugal last movement proves to be the ultimate representation of a musical democracy.