Music Worcester To Present The Knights Orchestra with Chris Thile at Mechanics Hall

Music Worcester will present The Knights Orchestra joined by mandolinist, composer, and singer Chris Thile in the Inaugural Joseph & Joyce Tamer Concert at Mechanics Hall on Friday, October 27th.   

Tickets and information can be found at musicworcester.org. 

The Knights and Thile will present an exploration of American music, old and new, along with a little Bach. Thile's new Attention! is a narrative song cycle for extroverted mandolinist and orchestra.  Thile also joins The Knights to sing a version of Caroline Shaw's 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.  The program concludes with Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, featuring soloists Chris Thile, mandolin, and Colin Jacobsen, violin. 

 

The Knights evolved from late-night chamber music reading parties with friends at the home of violinist Colin Jacobsen and cellist Eric Jacobsen. The brothers together serve as artistic directors of The Knights, with Eric Jacobsen as conductor. 

 

Proud to be known as “one of Brooklyn's sterling cultural products… known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory” (The New Yorker), the orchestra has toured extensively across the United States and Europe since its founding in 2007. The Knights are celebrated globally, appearing across the world's most prestigious stages, including those at Tanglewood Music Center, Ravinia Music Festival, the Kennedy Center, the Vienna Musikverein, and Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie. The orchestra has collaborated with many renowned soloists including Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Béla Fleck, Gil Shaham, and now the inimitable Chris Thile. 

 

MacArthur Fellow and Grammy Award-winning mandolinist, singer,  and songwriter Chris Thile, who the Guardian calls “that rare being: an all-round musician who can settle into any style, from bluegrass to classical,” and NPR calls a “genre-defying musical genius,” is a founding member of the critically acclaimed bands Punch Brothers and Nickel Creek. For four years, Thile hosted public radio favorite Live from Here with Chris Thile (formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion). With his broad outlook, Thile creates a distinctly American canon and a new musical aesthetic for performers and audiences alike, giving the listener “one joyous arc, with the linear melody and vertical harmony blurring into a single web of gossamer beauty” (New York Times). 

 

Most recently, Thile recorded Laysongs, on Nonesuch. The album is his first truly solo album: just Thile, his voice, and his mandolin, on new recordings of six original songs and three covers, all of which contextualize and banter with his ideas about spirituality. Recorded in a converted upstate New York church during the pandemic, Laysongs' centerpiece is the three-part “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth,” which was inspired by C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. The album also features a song Thile wrote about Dionysus; a performance of the fourth movement of Béla Bartók's Sonata for Solo Violin; “God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot” based on Buffy Sainte-Marie's adaptation of a Leonard Cohen poem; a cover of bluegrass legend Hazel Dickens' “Won't You Come and Sing for Me,” and “Ecclesiastes 2:24,” original instrumental loosely modeled after the Prelude from J.S. Bach's Partita for Solo Violin in E Major. 

  

About Music Worcester 

Music Worcester, Inc., originally known as the Worcester County Music Association, for years ran the Worcester Music Festival. Current programs reflect the merger in the mid-1990s of the Festival with the International Artists Series and the MA Jazz Festival. Great performances by world-renowned orchestras and guest soloists, chamber music, ballet, world music and dance, jazz and choral masterworks are hallmarks of Music Worcester's annual operations. Multiple educational programs currently serve youth and families of greater Worcester: masterclasses by visiting artists, Tickets to Opportunity, Festival Singers, in-school residencies, and the Young Artist Competitions. Integral to Music Worcester's annual operations, the Worcester Chorus has been part of the organization since the very first concert season in 1858. 

 

Coming up at Music Worcester this Fall 

Midori and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra  

Friday, November 3rd at 8PM  Mechanics Hall  

  

This Love Between Us 

Worcester Chorus & CONCORA Chris Shepard, Artistic Director,   

Vijay Gupta, violin, Kritya Dance Ensemble.   

Friday, November 10th at 8PM Mechanics Hall  

  

Handel Messiah  

Worcester Chorus Chris Shepard, Artistic Director.  

Saturday, December 2nd at 8PM Mechanics Hall  

  

Holiday Concert  

Worcester Chorus Women's Ensemble Mark Mummert, Artistic Director  

Sunday, December 17th at 4PM  Trinity Lutheran Church  

 

 

Tickets and information The Knights and Chris Thile, and for all Music Worcester events can be found at https://www.musicworcester.org/schedule/ 

  

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For more information, please contact: 

David Balsom/CK Communications Group 617.510.2316 -dbalsom@ckcommgroup.com  

Adam Klein/CK Communications Group  617.504.6156-  adam@ckcommgroup.com  

 

 

 

Also coming to Music Worcester this season 

 

Tchaikovsky, Paganini, & Gershwin   

Andrew Armstrong, piano; Kevin Zhu violin, Jan Vogler cello.    

Wednesday, January 24th at 7:30PM  BrickBox Theater at JMAC  

  

National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine  

Friday, February 9th at 8PM Mechanics Hall  

  

Voces8  

A cappella sensation and 2023 Grammy-nominated ensemble. 

 Saturday, February 10th at 8PM Mechanics Hall  

  

Jeanine De Bique, Soprano & Warren Jones, piano. 

Friday, February 23rd at 8PM Curtis Performance Hall  

 

Voices of Eternal Light  

The Worcester Chorus & Worcester Chorus Women's Ensemble   

Sunday, February 25th at 4PM  First Baptist Church 

  

Mnozil Brass 

Friday, March 1st at 8PM Mechanics Hall  

  

Orchestre Métropolitain  

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor  

Sunday, March 3rd at 4PM Mechanics Hall  

  

Natalie MacMaster & Donnell Leahy  

Saturday, March 9th at 8PM The Hanover Theatre  

  

American Spiritual Ensemble  

Saturday, April 6th at 8PM Curtis Performance Hall  

  

Bach B Minor Mass The Worcester Chorus   

Sunday, May 5th at 4PM Mechanics Hall 

  

Marc-Andre Hamelin  

Thursday, May 9th at 7:30PM Mechanics Hall  

  

Tessa Lark, violin/fiddle & Frank Vignola, guitar  

Friday, May 18th  at 8PM Tuckerman Hall 

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