{"id":368772,"date":"2026-10-09T10:15:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T10:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/368772\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T10:15:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T10:15:22","slug":"the-strad-full-glass-brooklyn-rider-fills-an-evening-with-the-composers-exquisite-quartets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/368772\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strad &#8211; Full Glass: Brooklyn Rider fills an evening with the composer\u2019s exquisite quartets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"picture\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"2627-concert-brooklynrider-oct-3\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/44981_2627concertbrooklynrideroct3_67511.jpg\"   loading=\"eager\" class=\"lazyloaded\" width=\"4500\" height=\"3000\"\/><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Discover more <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestrad.com\/playing-hub\/featured-stories\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Featured Stories<\/a> like this in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestrad.com\/playing-hub\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Strad Playing Hub<\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In his memoir Words Without Music, Philip Glass praises the music of Charlie Parker and Bud Powell as a \u2019flow of energy that seemed unstoppable, a force of nature.\u2019 In mounting a full programme of Glass quartets, Brooklyn Rider proved the same can be said of Glass\u2019s work.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Temples of Resonance\u00a0was the title of the 4 October show at the Lensic Theatre in Santa Fe, an exhilarating two-hour performance of six of the composer\u2019s nine quartets. It served as marking the anniversary of Brooklyn Rider\u2019s 20th year, while also anticipating the composer\u2019s nonagenarian celebration (he turns 90 next year). Watching Brooklyn Rider perform with heart and soul was as much a full cup as hearing the extraordinary range of sounds they produced.<\/p>\n<p>Violist Nicholas Cords, in his introduction of the programme, warned that if anyone in the audience had the slightest trepidation about attending a show of strictly Glass, they could be assured that yes, there would be the iconic Glassian repetition, textures and harmony, but \u2019across all this music, what results is a complex space filled with a wildly diverse range of human emotion and experience\u2019.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Two of the quartets in particular stood out for their emotional impact, Quartet no.5, which the Riders played with a very deep, rich tone. Johnny Gandelsman on first violin and Colin Jacobsen on second (they swapped chairs later in the show) sounded like a locomotive roaring into a station in the second movement. Overall the piece flowed with lyricism and dramatic texture shifts that were aggressive but wound down to Buddha-like waterfalls of serenity.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The heartrending Quartet no.4 offered an elegiac tribute to the life of artist Brian Buczak, who died of AIDS at a young age. The second movement was eerie like a film noir, with Michael Nicolas on cello, driving the team through brooding rhapsodies.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This was the second programme of Santa Fe Pro Musica\u2019s new season, which unfortunately got off to a halting start in their first programme the week before, featuring banjo master\u00a0B\u00e9la Fleck. I attended the second night of the two-night Fleck programme, and it was clear there were timing miscues between the banjo artist and the Pro Musica orchestra.<\/p>\n<p class=\"picture\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"2627-concert-democraticvistas1-3\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/44980_2627concertdemocraticvistas13_345579.jpg\"   loading=\"lazy\" class=\"lazyloaded\" width=\"4500\" height=\"3000\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Additionally, Fleck\u2019s instrument was inadequately amplified and was often drowned out, especially during Gershwin\u2019s Rhapsody in Blue. Backstage after the show, Fleck admitted that he was not used to working with a conductor (violinist David Felberg in this instance) let alone an orchestra. It was obviously an experiment, and a brave one.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The theme of the new Santa Fe Pro Musica season is Democratic Vistas. Artistic director Colin Jacobsen\u2019s ambition here is to highlight American music and composers, in a kind of populist jubilee. On paper, Gershwin and Fleck fit the bill, but Rhapsody in Blue, no matter how twangy and lavish, makes me instinctively reach for my seatbelt and prepare for a United Airlines flight, given its usage as the airline\u2019s official theme.<\/p>\n<p>Philip Glass, on the other hand, may not be quite as popular nor populist as Gershwin but his hypnotic work, as demonstrated by Brooklyn Rider\u2019s stunning performance, is more nuanced and in many ways more human.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Photos courtesy Santa Fe Pro Musica.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Discover more Featured Stories like this in The Strad Playing Hub In his memoir Words Without Music, Philip&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-368772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}