Brooklyn Rider bio

Celebrating 20 years of shared musical exploration, Brooklyn Rider originated in a living room, four friends in search of an outlet for their curiosities. Inspired by the probing spirit of Germany’s pre–World War I artistic collective Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), the musicians recognized parallels with their creative community and began to build projects. In the following two decades, Brooklyn Rider has undertaken a staggering amount of work, carving a singular space in the world of string quartets. Through thoughtful programmatic framing, deep-rooted collaborations, and innovative commissioning projects, Brooklyn Rider has used the string quartet medium at every point in its adventurous journey as a vehicle for exploration and discovery, earning acclaim as “a string quartet of boundless imagination” (NPR).

To mark the 20-year milestone, a wide range of projects are on the horizon for the 2025–2026 season and beyond that celebrate the key elements of the ensemble’s work. Honoring a long-standing relationship with the string quartets of Philip Glass, Brooklyn Rider has embarked on the first retrospective of the composer’s complete works for string quartet. Initially presented by the Yale Schwarzman Center, it was repeated at the Met Cloisters in 2025 and will have other iterations. A major commission by Gabriela Lena Frank, Frida’s Dreams, is slated for the 2025–2026 season. The group’s latest recording and related commissioning project,The Four Elements (In A Circle Records, 2025), serves as a dual metaphor for the complex inner world of the string quartet and the future of planet Earth. The quartet expands its reach into orchestral performances in upcoming seasons with a major new work for quartet and orchestra by Nico Muhly, to be presented by a wide-ranging consortium of orchestras across Europe and North America. In other celebratory gestures, Brooklyn Rider presented 20 Years at Play, a six-concert mini-festival as part of Lincoln Center’s 2025 Summer for the City, and a special appearance at Tanglewood in August featured the Schubert Cello Quintet as the program’s centerpiece alongside the quartet’s friend and mentor Yo-Yo Ma.